Rainer Fetting's self-portraits are a fascinating example of the artist's approach to traditional genres in painting. He appropriates them, liberates them from their conventions, strips them down to their quintessence, and transforms them into something entirely new through his unique style. The present self-portrait also reflects this radicalness: through the clear formal division of the picture and the tense positioning of colorful accents, Fetting creates an enormous expressive power. In a broad brushstroke he sets isolated contours, which, sometimes light, sometimes dark, reinforce the structure of the picture. In the center of the picture, he confronts us with his tremendous presence as sitter, but the characterization of his own person recedes into the background. Through his paintings, which has a powerful expression that is hard to resist, he "succeeds in putting the viewer in a staged atmosphere of emotion, ecstasy, the immediacy of colors and the poignancy of faces and bodies." (Demosthenes Davvetas, Sprachlichkeit der Bilder, in: Rainer Fetting, Essen 1986, p. 11.)