Neo Rauch *
(born in Leipzig 1960)
Tankstelle, 1995, oil on paper on canvas, 274 x 176 cm, framed
Provenance:
Galerie EIGEN + ART
Private Collection, Northern Germany (acquired from the above in 2003)
Exhibited:
Hamburg, Kunsthalle Hamburg, Müde Helden. Ferdinand Hodler-Aleksandr Dejneka-Neo Rauch, 2012
Wien, Kunsthalle Wien, Halle 1, 1989 Ende der Geschichte oder Beginn der Zukunft, 2009-2010
Prag, Galerie Rudolfinum, Neue Rollen von 1993 bis heute, 2007
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Neo Rauch – Neue Rollen. Bilder 1993-2006, 2006-2007
Honululu Academy of Arts, Neo Rauch Works 1994-2002. The Leipziger Volkszeitung Collection, 2005
Long before Neo Rauch became the face of the New Leipzig School with his enigmatic figurative scenes, he created a pictorial world of quiet, peculiar tension in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Tankstelle (Petrol Station) dates from this early, formative phase. It is both an image of memory and a document of a country in upheaval.
Like film strips or comic panels, four pictorial registers are stacked on top of one another. Each presents a variation on the same motif: the sweeping canopy of a petrol station, the pumps on their island, curving roads trailing off, low functional buildings. The perspectives jump and tilt, as if someone were leafing through an album of fading views. A deep blue roof surface thrusts like a wedge across the boundaries of the registers, binding the scenes into a single, floating structure of memory fragments.
The choice of motif is no coincidence. In the GDR, the petrol station was more than a functional building. People often waited more than a decade for a Trabant or a Wartburg. Owning a car was a long-awaited privilege, and the few state-run Minol stations were places of longing for mobility and freedom. With the opening of the country, this was reversed within just a few years. The car became a matter of course, filling up became an everyday routine, and the familiar stations disappeared behind the logos of Western corporations. Rauch captures precisely this moment: the place that once held promise loses its meaning before it has fully become part of the new reality.
The pictorial language reinforces this dual perspective. Rich ochre, midnight indigo and the bright, exposed paper recall textbook plates, architectural drawings and the optimistic illustrations of socialist modernism. Rauch quotes this aesthetic without romanticising it. The palm tree at the edge of the picture seems like a distant dream of places that had long been out of reach and were now suddenly open.
Striking is the complete absence of people. The petrol station lies deserted in harsh light, a place of transition where time seems to stand still. In this, Rauch captures the mood of the post-reunification years: the old world is still visible but already hollowed out, the new one is there but not yet inhabited. Perception and reality drift apart.
The painting has been shown in numerous exhibitions, including in Honolulu. It was created a few years before Rauch's international breakthrough and documents the moment in which the artist developed his vocabulary of quotation, fragment and enigmatic montage. A key work from the early period of one of the most important painters of our time, translating German history after 1989 into an image of timeless power.
Specialist: Joëlle Romba
(born in Leipzig 1960)
Tankstelle, 1995, oil on paper on canvas, 274 x 176 cm, framed
Provenance:
Galerie EIGEN + ART
Private Collection, Northern Germany (acquired from the above in 2003)
Exhibited:
Hamburg, Kunsthalle Hamburg, Müde Helden. Ferdinand Hodler-Aleksandr Dejneka-Neo Rauch, 2012
Wien, Kunsthalle Wien, Halle 1, 1989 Ende der Geschichte oder Beginn der Zukunft, 2009-2010
Prag, Galerie Rudolfinum, Neue Rollen von 1993 bis heute, 2007
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Neo Rauch – Neue Rollen. Bilder 1993-2006, 2006-2007
Honululu Academy of Arts, Neo Rauch Works 1994-2002. The Leipziger Volkszeitung Collection, 2005
Long before Neo Rauch became the face of the New Leipzig School with his enigmatic figurative scenes, he created a pictorial world of quiet, peculiar tension in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Tankstelle (Petrol Station) dates from this early, formative phase. It is both an image of memory and a document of a country in upheaval.
Like film strips or comic panels, four pictorial registers are stacked on top of one another. Each presents a variation on the same motif: the sweeping canopy of a petrol station, the pumps on their island, curving roads trailing off, low functional buildings. The perspectives jump and tilt, as if someone were leafing through an album of fading views. A deep blue roof surface thrusts like a wedge across the boundaries of the registers, binding the scenes into a single, floating structure of memory fragments.
The choice of motif is no coincidence. In the GDR, the petrol station was more than a functional building. People often waited more than a decade for a Trabant or a Wartburg. Owning a car was a long-awaited privilege, and the few state-run Minol stations were places of longing for mobility and freedom. With the opening of the country, this was reversed within just a few years. The car became a matter of course, filling up became an everyday routine, and the familiar stations disappeared behind the logos of Western corporations. Rauch captures precisely this moment: the place that once held promise loses its meaning before it has fully become part of the new reality.
The pictorial language reinforces this dual perspective. Rich ochre, midnight indigo and the bright, exposed paper recall textbook plates, architectural drawings and the optimistic illustrations of socialist modernism. Rauch quotes this aesthetic without romanticising it. The palm tree at the edge of the picture seems like a distant dream of places that had long been out of reach and were now suddenly open.
Striking is the complete absence of people. The petrol station lies deserted in harsh light, a place of transition where time seems to stand still. In this, Rauch captures the mood of the post-reunification years: the old world is still visible but already hollowed out, the new one is there but not yet inhabited. Perception and reality drift apart.
The painting has been shown in numerous exhibitions, including in Honolulu. It was created a few years before Rauch's international breakthrough and documents the moment in which the artist developed his vocabulary of quotation, fragment and enigmatic montage. A key work from the early period of one of the most important painters of our time, translating German history after 1989 into an image of timeless power.
Specialist: Joëlle Romba
