“I painted the first three kiss pictures in 1978, and they have a similar style of flowing color as the ”van Gogh and Wall" pictures from the same year, which, however, become more intense and dynamic from picture to picture. The pale yellow-ochre-pink tones also appear in both series. At the time, I was inspired by the American Abstract Expressionists, especially by Willem de Kooning. After my first stay in New York in the fall of 1978, I developed a more intense painting style and a greater use of color, though this varied depending on the subject of the paintings.

In contrast to the first kiss paintings from 1978, which were still rendered in more delicate colors, this kiss from 1981 features a crisper palette, and I notice that a few cubist elements have been incorporated. It seems that I had tried my hand at Picasso. “In addition to eroticism and discoveries in painting,' The Kiss' was certainly always a symbol of circumstances in life that went beyond that.”
Rainer Fetting about the present work, 2025.

Together with fellow artists such as Luciano Castelli, Helmut Middendorf, Salomé, and Bernd Zimmer, Rainer Fetting made a name for himself as a member of the artist groups “Neue Wilde” (New Wild Ones), “Junge Wilde” (Young Wild Ones), or the “Moritzboys” in the 1970s. In 1977, they jointly founded the collectively run “Galerie am Moritzplatz” in the isolated, subcultural Berlin art world. In the early 1980s, Fetting's artistic career hit its first peak: in 1980, his works were on display in the exhibition “Heftige Malerei” (Fierce Painting) at the Haus am Waldsee in Berlin; in 1981, he participated in the exhibition “A New Spirit in Painting” at the Royal Academy in London; and in 1982, the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin showed his work in the highly acclaimed exhibition “Zeitgeist.” At that time, the artist was represented by, among others, the Mary Boone Gallery in New York, which also offered our work. In the relatively isolated Berlin art world at the time, the intensity of the works seemed like a liberation from the largely prevailing, established art clichés. To this day, they have lost none of their impetuous, impulsive power and timeless relevance.

The first three “Kuss” (Kiss) paintings were created in 1978, and Rainer Fetting continued the series in the early 1980s.
With his expressive depictions, in which he moves so close to the models' faces, Fetting engages in a role play that is characteristic of him—a play with intense, contrasting colors, “fierce”, energetic and expressive brushstrokes, passion, immediacy, homosexual eroticism, sensuality, and a desire to provoke. At a time when the end of taboos surrounding homosexuality still seemed a long way off, even in legal terms, this very personal painting is not only role-play, but also rebellion, protest, and exclamation mark, as well as an overwhelming testimony, both in terms of color and size, to the unconventional and wild Berlin art scene of the 1980s. [CH]