Selbstporträt

A pupil of Arno Rink at the Hochshule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, in the former German Democratic Republic, Rauch has been a teacher of painting and graphics since 2003. His studio is located in the Spinnerei, a former industrial conglomerate on the outskirts of the city, which, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, was transformed into a complex for artist studios and exhibition spaces. The legacy of the figurative tradition of the Leipzig School is reinterpreted by Rauch (with evident influence from his master Arno Rink, who was very close to Salvador Dali), by a sense of mysterious dreamlike suspension that characterises each of his paintings, where the verisimilar rendering of real scenarios and characters is superimposed by interior and fantastic events. In a painting essentially based on primary colours and characterised by cold light, Rauch, from one painting to the next, combines settings and landscapes belonging to an indefinite space-time, populated by characters from different eras.

In this self-portrait, the artist’s gaze is directed towards an object or person on the left. On the right, two tendrils intertwine tightly with each other. Max Seidel and Serena Calamai pointed out the close relationship of this composition with the painting entitled Handreichung, depicting Rauch’s parents standing as they face an easel on which a painting is resting. One could interpret the two intertwined branches as a reference to the pair of parents, who were both painters: the painting would thus take on the meaning of an intimate appeal by the artist, so that his parents might, from another dimension, inspire and guide him in his artistic production.

The work was donated by the artist to the Uffizi Galleries in 2020, on the occasion of a solo exhibition held in the Andito degli Angiolini in the Pitti Palace.