Arnulf Rainer, CRUX

Room 3

The Crucifixions began in the 1950s with an interest in mysticism, art history and the theology of the cross (Louis Chardon, John of the Cross, Catherine of Siena, Simone Weil, Emil Cioran and others). All these plastic works do not pretend to be figurations for sacred spaces. They derive from very personal roots. […] It is only to be noted that the pictorial controversies about “presence”, “represence”, “reference” etc., which have raged in the Christian Church for hundreds of years, have long since occupied my thoughts, for it was then that the path to 20th century art began.
Arnulf Rainer

Bleeding
He rose
of violets
A former human limb.
Towards the incarnadine wood
It brought itself.

The Invincible
won,
the Invincible
landed
burned in the embers
screaming
the impossible peace
of who
eternal
loved
the one who
eternally
was to be
only hated.

Giovanni Testori

Arnulf Rainer was born in 1929 in Baden (Vienna). He lives and works between Vienna, Bavaria and Tenerife.