Arnulf Rainer was born in Baden, Austria in 1929. Very little is recorded about his early years but Rainer would become one of the most well respected painters of his time incorporating the theories and concepts behind Surrealism.

Internationally acclaimed for his work with abstract informal artistic paintings, Rainer joined with other artists in 1950 to form what was called the Hundsgruppe which is translated as the "Dog Group" and based on the ideas behind Surrealism which was an artistic cultural movement of the 1920s.

The ideas of Surrealism was based mostly on the element of a shock-factor so it isn’t surprising that Rainer found his place as an artist painting within the realm of its definition. However, in 1953 his work began to move in another direction taking a turn toward overpaintings.

It was in 1954 that Rainer moved his talent in a darker direction with the Destruction of Forms. In 1961, he was actually arrested for one of his artistic endeavors within the ideas of the Destruction of Forms when he painted over the prize-winning work of a young female artist.

In 1963, Arnulf Rainer opened his studio in West Berlin and it was in the sixties that Arnulf Rainer began to truly experiment with the artistic creation brought on by drugs, specifically those that trigger hallucinations such as LSD. In 1968, he began painting his own face and participated in an individual exhibition at the Museum of the 20th Century in Vienna.

In 1978, Arnulf Rainer was awarded the Great Austrian National Prize and from 1981 until 1995, Rainer taught as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In New York, The Arnulf Rainer Museum opened in 1993 bringing the work of a talented artist to the states.