Picture "Soil" (2013)

Rauch's enigmatic pictorial worlds are characterised by a luminous opaque colourfulness and show figures in overlapping spaces and times that the artist often dreamed up.

Especially in America, Rauch finds many admirers and, above all, buyers – and this even though his works are anything but light fare. The pictorial worlds are rich with meaning, oppressive and irony-free – for some, even sometimes for Rauch himself, too gloomy. He states that evil sometimes penetrates his work more deeply than it should. "I think the evil fascinates everyone. The only question is on what level. The evil is often organised in more complex ways than the good. The good can also approach us as red-cheeked one-dimensionality, as holy simplicity. The evil, however, is confusing and not infrequently beautiful. A dizzying, addictive beauty can be inherent in it. As a painter, I am not infrequently only moderately armed to face it." Painting had to deal with the evil responsibly, "for instance, in the sense that I lead the viewer to the abyss, to the first circle of hell but that I don't push him into it."

For Neo Rauch, his birthplace Leipzig, Germany, was and is the centre of his life and work. "It is the landscape of Central Germany that feeds me with streams of inspiration, that touches me, in which I also feel soulfully embedded."

In 1960, when he was only six weeks old, his parents died. He grew up with his grandparents in Aschersleben but returned to Leipzig for his studies and graduated as a master-class student at the Academy of Visual Arts. From 2005 to 2009, he was a professor at the Leipziger Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, and since 2009 he has been an honorary professor there. He has his studio in the artists' commune "Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei".

Neo Rauch's works are highly valued and considered a rarity in the art market. At Art Basel 2009, Hollywood star Brad Pitt bought the oil painting "Etappe" (1998) for 1.2 million Swiss francs.

He has had major solo exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, among others. The Neo Rauch Graphic Foundation in Aschersleben has had its own museum dedicated to the artist since 2012. His works are represented in renowned international museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam or the Hamburger Kunsthalle.

At the beginning of March 2017, the documentary film "Neo Rauch – Comrades and Companions" was released in cinemas. For over three years, director Nicola Graef accompanied the secretive artist at work in his small studio and at vernissages and was even able to get his worldwide collectors in front of the camera.