The discipline of German at NUI Galway will launch an art exhibition presenting engravings by Caspar Walter Rauh on Wednesday, 22 October 2014 at 5 p.m. in the NUI Galway Art Gallery (in the Quadrangle).
You are welcome to attend the launch of the exhibition which will be followed by a wine & cheese reception in presence of the German cultural attaché, Peter Adams.
Rauh (1912-1983) was a German graphic artist, illustrator and painter working in the tradition of Fantastic Realism and Surrealism. Despite the huge initial success of his drawings and engravings after World War II, inspired by traumatic experiences as a soldier in Russia, public interest in his works declined as Germany turned its back on the war. He became an outsider who was ignored by mainstream art. It is only in recent years that Rauh’s work has been rediscovered with its Bosch-like testimony to the cruelties of the war. For the first time in Ireland, this exhibition displays some of his finest engravings, mostly created after 1960 – technically brilliant phantasmagories reminiscent of earlier traumas but increasingly revealing the artist’s whimsical sense of humour and his inclination towards the idyllic and bizarre. Dream-like images, oscillating between barbaric violence and fairy-tale fantasies, reflect the complexity of a highly original artist.
The exhibition has been organised by German at NUI Galway and curated by Professor Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa and Michael Shields. It is sponsored by the German Embassy and the Arts Office, NUI Galway.
Opening hours are Tuesdays - Saturdays 1.00-4.30 pm. Admission is free.
The exhibition ends on 8 November 2014.
Hans-Walter
Professor Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa
Chair of German
School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
National University of Ireland, Galway
Galway
Ireland
Tel. 00353 91 492239
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