Arnulf Rainer pro vídeňský operní ples

Arnulf Rainer is one of the most influential figures in contemporary art. His overpainted portraits have become icons of Austrian Postwar Art. The painting "Schwarzer Samt, Rote Seide" (Black Velvet, Red Silk) by the artist, who passed away in December 2025, now serves as the poster motif for the 68th Vienna Opera Ball. It will be auctioned on February 19 at the Dorotheum as part of the Opera Ball Charity Auction. The proceeds from the auction, like any donation related to the ball, will benefit the Austria Helps Austria initiative. No fees or surcharges will be added. More information under https://www.wiener-staatsoper.at/

„Schwarzer Samt, rote Seide“ (Black velvet, red silk) – a visual poem

by Helmut Friedel

Already the title of the painting resonates with key messages of the celebration: velvet and silk rustle and cling enticingly to thoughts of the forthcoming festivity; they appeal not only to our sense of sight, but even more to our sense of touch through their soft, fine textures. In his painting, Arnulf Rainer brings a momentum of supple corporeality into play through curved lines, while delicate, translucent bands of colour sweep across the pictorial surface like silken veils. A feast of concealing and revealing leads to the painting’s light and harmonious overall tone.

Are we mistaken in this perception? Is Arnulf Rainer not the great overpainter, beneath whose painterly attacks found image ideas sink back and disappear, yielding to yet another layer of pictorial skin? In memory, we associate these paintings with black, matte-glossy surfaces whose melancholic mood evokes dark forebodings. They emerged from the 1950s onward as attempts to come to terms with what had been endured – Holocaust and Hiroshima, war and destruction, and the anxieties of the present. In 1951, Rainer published a portfolio of photographs entitled Perspectives of Annihilation, containing a catalogue of deficits: silence, loss, absence, death, the other, nothingness. Such tones resound in the statements of the 22-year-old artist, seemingly captive to his fears as he begins to situate himself within an existentialist world. Yet we are better advised to see the other side as well: Rainer also paints his colour coverings in red, green, and even white. Even then, he never loses sight of colour, as demonstrated in the Proportions, some of which are collaged from coloured paper.

In the great short story The Unknown Masterpiece (Le chef-d’œuvre inconnu, 1831), Honoré de Balzac describes the disappearance of an image within painting. The picture seems to burn up under the onslaught of painterly impetus in luminous colours; step by step, the recognizable representation sinks into a turmoil of paint. Rainer, by contrast, pursues a completely different approach in his struggle with and against emptiness – against the void, the nothing, the white surface.

Another turning point in the upward spiral of Arnulf Rainer’s work occurs through his engagement with photography from the late 1960s onward. He begins confronting his own physiognomy through photo-booth portraits taken at night at Vienna’s Westbahnhof. In the reworking of the enlarged motifs, an entirely new way of dealing with the image emerges. The image becomes the site and starting point for a new painting of emotional tension and vehement painterly gesture. “Once, while painting over the cheeks of a large photograph, my brush broke in the frenzy of painting. In my haste I tried using my hands, striking and pounding the cheek, and I was fascinated by the slapping, by the traces of my blows.” (A.R., 1974)

Initially in the Face Farces and later in Hand Painting, Rainer discovers ever more possibilities for colour as an immediate expression through fingers and hands on the painting ground. The covering with colour is no longer absolute, and this leads to paintings with glazed, transparent applications of paint. In the veil paintings, to which the present work Black Velvet, Red Silk (2001) belongs, the hues lie so closely layered in sequence yet so thinly applied that they appear translucent, like real veils of gauze. Here, the lines of drawing interweave with the radiance of colour to form a joyful culmination of the painter’s late work – joyful insofar as Rainer was able to unfold from the burdened heaviness of his early work toward luminous images in “rose-red and sky-blue.”

The auction will be conducted by Dorotheum on behalf of and for the account (conveyance) of Caritas Österreich which handles the administration of donations for aid campaigns organised by Österreich hilft Österreich. A direct business relationship will be established between Caritas Austria (as fiduciary representative) and the buyer.

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Vera Hinteregger MA BA
Dorotheum GmbH & Co KG
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Account
IBAN: AT06 2011 1800 8076 0700
BIC: GIBATWWXXX
Reason for transfer: Opernball-Charity-Kunstauktion 2026

Deductibility of donations
Caritas, the recipient of the donation, is approved as a donation beneficiary (Reg. No. SO 1126). When purchasing a piece of artwork at this auction, it is possible to claim 50% of the purchase price as a donation with the tax authorities. For private individuals, the relevant donation notification to the Ministry of Finance will be handled by the charitable organisation in accordance with the legal amendments made in 2017. In addition to your name (as entered in the Central Population Register), your date of birth is also required for this purpose. Further information can be found under Ministry of Finance/deductibility of donations from 1 January 2017: https://www.bmf.gv.at/kampagnen/spendenservice.html

Collection of the artwork after agreement
Vera Hinteregger MA BA
Dorotheum GmbH & Co KG
Dorotheergasse 17
1010 Vienna
Tel. +43-1-515 60-105
Mobile: +43 664 888 444 95
vera.hinteregger@dorotheum.at