Ahead of his Hong Kong exhibition, Tatler visits the studio of the German artist who is widely celebrated as one of the most influential painters of his generation
In East Germany, all the cool kids read Mosaik, an extremely popular comic book. One of these cool kids was artist Neo Rauch, who grew up there in the 1970s to 80s. He lived vicariously through the three protagonists who travelled the world and had (mis)adventures. “It was like they were travelling for us, since we couldn’t do it,” says Rauch, sitting in his airy Leipzig studio. “It showed the world to those trapped behind the wall.”
The German painter’s studio is in a building in a former industrial area in Leipzig, where a former cotton mill was turned into a complex housing many studios and warehouses. His wife and fellow artist Rosa Loy has her own studio right next door. The couple welcomed Tatler to Rauch’s studio, where a punch bag hangs in one corner, and scattered across the paint-splattered floors are trinkets and gifts from travels and friends, and a couple of unframed canvases: two works that will be on view at Field Signs, the artist’s current show at David Zwirner, Hong Kong (that’s starting from November 16); the remainder had been dispatched to the framer. There’s a makeshift bar in another corner, and a disco ball hanging from the ceiling—both essential for celebrating festive occasions, most recently the artist’s 63rd birthday. There’s also a kitchen in which Rauch was preparing an aromatic lunch of gnocchi cooked in butter and thyme, and peppers stuffed with minced meat. This wholesome, grounded ritual of lunch is a more-or-less daily practice for Loy and Rauch, who take a break from their art to eat together, then head back to work.
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It’s not every day you expect to be fed by an artist who is touted as the greatest painter of his generation, nor imagine that his primary concern would be forgetting to provide something sweet. “I wish we had time to pick up some dessert from one of the local bakeries, but everything is closed today because it’s a public holiday,” Rauch says apologetically.
The holiday was German Unity Day, held on October 3 and celebrating the formal reunification of East and West Germany on the same day in 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It is a particularly significant event for the couple, who grew up in Leipzig, then part of East Germany. “The situation in the east was truly isolated,” Rauch recalls of life behind the iron curtain, an existence characterised by a severe lack of exposure to the outside world, or even access to information about it. “Nowadays, information comes in big floods, everything is so accessible; at that time, there wasn’t even a book we could get from the outside.”
Looking at Rauch’s signature paintings—vivid, fantastical, heavily detailed, symbolic and often allegorical—it’s hard to imagine he missed out on exposure to the outside world. He and Loy were both part of the New Leipzig school of painters, which emerged in reunited Germany in the 1990s, and whose shared characteristics included high technical skill and an aesthetic drawing from socialist realism (an realist style that depicted Soviet or communist ideals), fantasy, and local historical references to Leipzig and East Germany.