After his clients' negative response to Adebar and Schwechater, Kubelka moved from Vienna, Austria to Stockholm, Sweden.
His friend, painter Arnulf Rainer, commissioned him to make a film about Rainer.
Before Kubelka was able to purchase film for the project, he laid out patterns on pieces of paper.
He made the film out of two strips of film stock—one transparent and one black—and two strips of magnetic sound—one with no signal and one with continuous white noise.
Kubelka named the film after Rainer as thanks for sponsoring the project and as a "compromise" in the event that he was disillusioned with the result.
Arnulf Rainer premiered May 1960 in Vienna, where most of the audience walked out of the screening.
Kubelka has stated that after the premiere, he "lost most of [his] friends because of Arnulf Rainer".

Since its release, Arnulf Rainer has become Kubelka's best known work, embodying his adoption of the frame as the basic unit of cinema instead of the shot.
The film is known as a fundamental work for structural film.
Critic P. Adams Sitney identified it as one of "only three flicker films of importance", alongside Tony Conrad's The Flicker and Paul Sharits's N:O:T:H:I:N:G. Kubelka has declined to digitize Arnulf Rainer, stating that "cinema is a completely different medium which cannot be imitated by the digital medium."
After his clients' negative response to Adebar and Schwechater, Kubelka moved from Vienna, Austria to Stockholm, Sweden. His friend, painter Arnulf Rainer, commissioned him to make a film about Rainer. Before Kubelka was able to purchase film for the project, he laid out patterns on pieces of paper. He made the film out of two strips of film stock—one transparent and one black—and two strips of magnetic sound—one with no signal and one with continuous white noise. Kubelka named the film after Rainer as thanks for sponsoring the project and as a "compromise" in the event that he was disillusioned with the result. Arnulf Rainer premiered May 1960 in Vienna, where most of the audience walked out of the screening. Kubelka has stated that after the premiere, he "lost most of [his] friends because of Arnulf Rainer".
Since its release, Arnulf Rainer has become Kubelka's best known work, embodying his adoption of the frame as the basic unit of cinema instead of the shot. The film is known as a fundamental work for structural film. Critic P. Adams Sitney identified it as one of "only three flicker films of importance", alongside Tony Conrad's The Flicker and Paul Sharits's N:O:T:H:I:N:G. Kubelka has declined to digitize Arnulf Rainer, stating that "cinema is a completely different medium which cannot be imitated by the digital medium."
Arnulf Rainer (film)