Rainer Maria Latzke is a German artist working in the field of trompe-l'œil and mural painting. He taught at the Utah State University and is founder of the Institute of Frescography. Latzke is Honorary Professor of the Fudan University, Shanghai and Guest Professor of the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art . Latzke was ranked one of the 12 cultural trendsetters of the 1990s by Forbes and one of the world's best artists of the last four centuries by the Artists Trade Union of Russia. He is a cousin of Poland´s wealthiest entrepreneur Jan Kulczyk.

Trompe-l'œil is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. Trompe l'œil, which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into perceiving painted objects or spaces as real. Forced perspective is a related illusion in architecture.