Neo Rauch: Heillichtung, 2014, oil on canvas, diptych, 118 3/8 by 197 1/2 inches. Courtesy David Zwirner Gallery, New York.
In the June 2010 issue of Art in America, Gregory Volk described Neo Rauch’s paintings as “scruffy and elegant, cartoonish and old masterish, forthright and enigmatic”-a characterization that still applies to the Leipzig-born artist’s idiosyncratic body of work. The new paintings in “At the Well” show figures engaged in odd activities set in equally puzzling environments. Sometimes, as in the large-scale diptych Heillichtung, a separate image of a similar painting in a different style and palette is “inset” into the canvas’s upper left hand corner. Other paintings, like Am Brunnen and Der Felsenwirt, are more monochromatic, with sepia or black-and-white palettes augmented by pops of bright color.