Neo Rauch - Tapa blanda

First substantial monograph from a North American Museum on the German artist. Trained at the Leipzig Academy in the Socialist Realist aesthetic of communist East Germany, Rauch was still in his twenties when the Soviet Union collapsed and Germany reunited. While never fully abandoning his formalist training, he has developed a unique painterly style that incorporates comic strip motifs and advertising imagery. Heroic workmen and sturdy women are depicted in harsh industrial colours with an almost cartoonish realism. Here is an obliquely-coded world of productivity without purpose. The fact that Rauch continues to live and work in Leipzig provides compelling insight into the artist s intent. Two essays look at recent works, magnificently illustrated in full-page colour plates. In English and French.