NUI Galway’s discipline of German will launch a new art exhibition presenting engravings by Caspar Walter Rauh on Wednesday, 22 October at 5pm in Art Gallery in the Quadrangle.

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 curated by NUI Galway’s Professor Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa and Michael Shields, and is sponsored by the German Embassy and the Arts Office, NUI Galway.

All are welcome to attend the launch, followed by a reception in the presence of the German cultural attaché, Peter Adams.

The exhibition will be open Tuesday to Saturday from 1-4.30pm until Saturday, 8 November.

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