Neo Rauch: Paintings

Neo Rauch: Paintings is the English-language catalogue of Rauch's 50th-birthday retrospective, which showed his paintings from 1982 to the spring of 2010.

Hatje Cantz published it in May 2010 for the show's two venues. These were the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig (18 April to 15 August 2010) and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (20 April to 15 August 2010). Hans-Werner Schmidt and Bernhart Schwenk edited it, and Schwenk contributes a text that places the whole body of work in art-historical context. Longtime associates write about the pictures, among them the artists Luc Tuymans, Jonathan Meese and Michaël Borremans. Critics and historians including Rudij Bergmann and Werner Hofmann each interpret works of their own choosing in short entries. Uwe Tellkamp wrote an essay for the volume, and Timm Rautert's photographs of the artist's studio close it. Maria Magdalena Koehn designed the book, which runs to 332 pages with 155 illustrations and is bound in imitation leather.

Rauch was born in Leipzig in 1960 and studied at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst there under Arno Rink. After the fall of the Wall his large, enigmatic canvases drew international attention. He became the most prominent painter of the New Leipzig School, which widened figurative painting with elements of Pop Art, comics and advertising graphics.