Rainer Fetting

Rainer Fetting was born on 31 December 1949 in Wilhelmshaven, West Germany, and followed an unconventional path to painting — training first as a carpenter and stage builder before enrolling at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, where he studied from 1972 to 1978. That period of formation proved decisive not only artistically but institutionally: in 1977, while still a student, Fetting co-founded the Galerie am Moritzplatz in Berlin, a self-organized space that became a crucible for a generation of painters working against the prevailing currents of conceptual and minimal art. The gallery's first solo exhibition that same year marked the public beginning of his career, and Fetting quickly emerged as one of the central figures of the Berlin Neue Wilde — a movement defined by its return to raw, expressively charged figuration.

In 1978, Fetting received a DAAD scholarship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, which brought him to New York and opened a sustained engagement with the city that would feed directly into his painting. A 1980 group exhibition at the Haus am Waldsee in Berlin, shared with fellow Neue Wilde painters Zimmer, Middendorf, and Salomé, consolidated the movement's visibility and placed Fetting at its core. Works such as The Wall and Times Square reflect the dual geography — Berlin and New York — that has long animated his figurative practice, while paintings like Seated Nude—Portrait of Susanne Hockend and Mann und Axt (grün) I demonstrate the visceral, body-centered energy that distinguishes his canvases.

From the mid-1990s onward, Fetting extended his figurative vocabulary into public sculpture, undertaking a series of significant portrait commissions. A bronze portrait of Willy Brandt, installed at the Willy Brandt House in Berlin in 1996, marked his major transition into monumental political portraiture. Subsequent commissions followed, including a portrait sculpture of Henri Nannen in 2005 and bronze works depicting Helmut Schmidt in 2008, projects that situate Fetting within the tradition of commemorative public art while retaining the directness of his painterly approach. His work is held in the collection of the Berlinische Galerie in Berlin, and he continues to exhibit actively — most recently through presentations at Galerie Robert Grunenberg in 2021 and Galerie Deschler's anniversary exhibition in 2025. Galleries including König Galerie and Galerie Thomas Fuchs have also presented his work, reflecting a sustained presence across the German gallery landscape.