Georg Rauch, artist in oils, watercolors, serigraphs and kinetic sculpture, was born at noon, in Salzburg, Austria on February 14, 1924. His mother said that all the churchbells of Salzburg rang to welcome him into the world.

Young Georg grew up during the depression years between the two World Wars. Life was a struggle, and his mother, Beatrix, who had been born a baroness, now had to work alongside his father,  Max, to keep the small family fed and clothed. No matter what else they lacked, paper and pencils for drawing were always available. Georg's mother insisted that her best Christmas or birthday presents were drawings from him. Beatrix saved all of his childhood drawings, and many of them are archived at the famous Albertina graphic museum in Vienna.

 Since Georg's mother and grandmother were Jewish, with the matriarchal line unbroken, he could have been considered a full Jew. But both women had married Aryan men and, thankfully, by Hitler's reckoning, Georg was a 1/4 Jew. This meant that he was ignored by his teachers, forbidden to join any youth organizations, and, in general, was treated like a third class citizen.

 When Hitler took over Austria, Georg's mother began hiding Jewish friends behinds false walls in their apartment. She would then attempt to smuggle them out of Austria. As Georg grew, he helped his mother to purchase food and other essesntials on the black market. Together they made up small emergency packets for their friends to take on their journeys.

 Each summer Georg took his old bike and spent the vacation months touring Austria. These summers would turn out to be wonderful physical training for all he would endure in Russia. Also, as he neared the age of 18, he was scouting, trying to find the place where he might be able to hide out and not become part of Hitler's war machine.

 He was unsuccessful in his search, and was drafted into the German Wehrmacht soon after he turned 18. Thus begins Georg's long journey through training in Czechoslovakia, then fighing in the field on the eastern front, and becoming a prisoner of war in Kiev, Ukraine. 

 These few years, plus the additional ones he spent in an alpine sanitarium with bone tuberculosis and 3/4 of his body in a cast, were to have a very strong effect on his life as an artist. He said, "The years I spent drawing my fellow patients as they lay in the healing sun, were my best art school."

 Georg had some training as an engineer and an architect, but after he was released from the sanatarium, his mother encouraged him to spend the rest of his life doing what he had always loved best – drawing and painting. When he expressed doubt that he would be able to make a living as an artist his mother said, "As far as I know, no one in our family has ever died of starvation, and I don't think you are going to be the first."

 Georg's first one man shows in Vienna were well-received, and he was accepted into the prestigious Wiener Secession.

Grants by the government, a subsidized 5th floor atelier and the sale of his watercolors, all helped him to concentrate what mattered most,  and to develop as an oil painter.

For the first ten years he painted clowns and sad-looking men. Friends and relatives would say, "That guy looks like you." 

But Georg would vehemently deny this, "No, it was some guy a saw on the street or at a café."

After 10 years, he finally recognized that all of his paintings had been an act of carthisis, of self cleansings, and dealing with all he had experienced in the war.

Seeking a new theme, Georg took a model to draw. Once, when she fell asleep on his comfortable, green velvet chaise lounge, Georg decided to move much closer than the accepted academic distance to a model. He was astounded and excited by what he saw at what he came to call "smelling distance."

In many of my paintings you can see a portion of the horizon. This dividing line between land or water and

the sky has symbolized for me distance and the yearning or curiosity to discover what lies beyond. From my Mexican home, nestled on a hillside, I can see such a piece of the horizon. It belongs just as much to my life as do the sun and the moon, my wife, the pure air, and the fact that here, in a warm climate with light and strong colors, I can paint in peace every day of the year. I paint what I see around me and what I find in myself.

By simply moving his head an inch or two, the landscape of a woman's curves and valleys changed completely.

 Georg continued to show his paintings, in Paris, London, Vienna and Duesseldorf. In 1965 he met his future wife, Phyllis, in Vienna, and in the spring of 1966 he moved to the U.S.  The couple were married in September, 1966.

 Over the next ten years Georg would live in New York City, Guadalajara Mexico, and Southern California. His style was changed and influenced by each of these moves, but whatever the theme, Georg's paintings  always exhibited a strong graphic line.

On one of Rauch's many trips to Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara for an exhibition, he discovered his dream property. He felt that he wasn't doing his best work in California, and finding the hillside property, with views of the mountains and Lake Chapala, provided the perfect opportunity to leave Callifornia and return to his beloved Mexico.

 For the next 30 years Georg continued to draw, paint in oil and watercolor, and make silkscreen prints. He was always inspired by the landscape around him, and by the Mexican colors. He exhibited all over Mexico and was honored with two major retrospectives during his life time, and one memorial show following his death in November 2006. Rauch is featured in the book:  Cuatro Siglos de Pintura Jalisciense Four Centuries of Jalisco Painting.