Rainer Fetting (born 1949) is a German painter and sculptor, the most visible of the Junge Wilden generation and among the best-selling German painters of the early 1980s. Studied at the Hochschule der Künste (HdK), Berlin, 1971–1979, where as a student he co-founded (1977) the self-run Galerie am Moritzplatz, Kreuzberg, with fellow students Helmut Middendorf, Salomé, and Bernd Zimmer.
Timeline
1975 — quickly-styled “large format” works based on gallery posters showing the US (Marlborough) and other Western artists. Represents a similar impulse seen in Alex Katz works by a still younger Martin Kippenberger; also references Josef Albers’s Homage to the Square.
1977 — co-founds Galerie am Moritzplatz in Kreuzberg with Helmut Middendorf, Bernd Zimmer, and Salomé. Becomes primary venue for the Junge Wilden.
1979 — featured in “Heftige Malerei” exhibition at Westfälisches Landesmuseum Münster; MoMA PS1 “New York / New Wave” — breakthrough show positioning Junge Wilden alongside neo-no wave music scene.
1980–1981 — Solos: Galerie am Moritzplatz, Berlin (1980); Marlborough, New York (1980); Anthony d’Offay, London (1981); Thomas Segal, Boston (1981); Heland Wetterling, Stockholm (1981). Works: The Wall / Quarry series; shower paintings; baths.
1982 — Documenta 7, Kassel. Solo at Fred Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles. Works: July (window to half-open terrace, view to late-summer landscape, 255 × 300 cm); View from the Window; Bath (ailments, 60 × 50 cm).
1983 — Marlborough Fine Art, New York. Gifted Fetting’s 1982 canvas July to Fred Hoffman in trust, later sold at Christie’s 1985. Moved to New York with partner Anna as Fetting’s European career contracted.
1985 — Exhibition at Gallery Kritios, Athens.
1986 — Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich. Moved to New York; Amanda Lear art-directed a gift exhibition.
1987 — Retrospective exhibition at Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna.
1990 — Retrospective at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin.
Shower paintings
The “Shower” or “Duschen” paintings (1980–1982) are among Fetting’s most visible and reproduced series. Large-scale, high-key canvases depicting solitary male figures in tiled bathrooms, seen from behind or in profile, bodies cropped and fragmented by the shower stall’s geometry. The paintings combine Cézanne-esque solidity with Berlin club-scene immediacy: the body is both classical nude and anonymous bath-house encounter. Water is rendered as thick impasto ridges and poured resin, creating a material drama that competes with the figure for attention.
The series was read in its moment as a synthesis of Neo-Expressionist figuration and New Wave sexuality — the body as both art-historical citation and erotic fact. Fetting’s own homoerotic subject matter was treated as unproblematic in the Berlin context, but the shower paintings’ later market collapse (prices fell sharply after 1987) has made them a contested site: genuine formal achievement or market-ready sensationalism.
Collections
Broadly collected in Germany: Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlinische Galerie, Bundeskunstsammlung, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, and provincial German museums.
See also
- Junge Wilden — the movement
- Salomé — fellow co-founder of Galerie am Moritzplatz
- Luciano Castelli — fellow Junge Wilde
- Helmut Middendorf — fellow co-founder