The painter and illustrator Arno Rink, who died last September, is regarded as an outstanding exponent of the second generation of the Leipzig School and a precursor of the New Leipzig School. With around 65 paintings, numerous large-format drawings and biographical photographs and documents, the retrospective exhibition illustrates his artistic cosmos. Sharp contours, exciting colour concepts, painstaking technique, bold composition and with no fear of pathos – this is how we generally envision Arno Rink’s perfect imagery. However, his personal destiny and contemporary events leave traces, including in his work. The exhibition, which Arno Rink himself worked on, attempts to enable a deeper, more personal insight into his creative work than has been possible thus far. Behind attitude, pride and dignity is concealed a highly-sensitive artist who addresses and processes personal experiences directly in his pictures.

Arno Rink was born in 1940 in Schlotheim, Thuringia. He studied at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig (HGB), firstly under Werner Tübke, Hans Mayer-Foreyt and Harry Blum,later primarily under Bernhard Heisig. In 1972 Arno Rink was appointed assistant at the HGB – the beginning of 35 years of teaching, which ended with the completion of the final Specialist Class for Painting in 2007. In the decisive years before and after German reunification Arno Rink exerted a key influence on the orientation of the school in his capacity as rector and vice-rector. As an artist and outstanding representative of the second generation of the Leipzig School, as a lecturer Arno Rink played a key, pioneering role as precursor of the New Leipzig School.

The “Arno Rink. Ich male!“ retrospective presents works from Arno Rink’s comparatively small oeuvre of some 200 paintings from all creative periods from 1965 to 2017, including a large portion of his major works. For the first time, collages and drawings from the estate that have never previously been shown publicly are on display, along with a number of uncompleted paintings. In a series of conversations conducted with Alfred Weidinger in the months before his death Arno Rink established the foundations for the retrospective, as well as selecting a number of works himself.