Günter Brus, one of many cardinal figures of the Viennese Actionism motion, has died. Brus, who co-founded the motion together with Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler, died in his dwelling metropolis of Graz, Austria on Saturday (10 February). He was the final surviving member of this founding group of Actionist artists, and his demise comes lower than every week earlier than an enormous survey of his work, that includes almost 500 items from all through his greater than six-decade profession, opens at Austria’s Kunsthaus Bregenz (16 February-20 Might). Brus was 85.
“The Kunsthaus Bregenz employees mourns the lack of this extraordinary artist. Brus is without doubt one of the most essential [artists] of the post-war interval and his departure is an incomparable loss for Austria’s artwork historical past,” Thomas D. Trummer, director of Kunsthaus Bregenz, mentioned in a press release. “Brus was a draftsman, Motion artist, poet, mental—and visionary. His works bear witness to a profound examination of the themes of humanity and existence.”
Brus was born within the Austrian village of Ardning in 1938, the identical 12 months that the nation was annexed by Nazi Germany. Dealing with and critiquing this darkish chapter in his native nation’s historical past would ultimately turn out to be central to the artist’s work. He studied at Kunstgewerbeschule in Graz earlier than transferring to the Academy of Nice Arts in Vienna, although he dropped out in 1960.
Günter Brus, set up view, Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2024 Photograph: Stefan Wagner. Courtesy of the artist. © Günter Brus, Kunsthaus Bregenz
On this interval, he was creating work that have been impressed by the Summary Expressionists well-liked within the US on the time. Brus quickly escalated the gestural parts that these artists employed and the corporeal processes that such work implied by explicitly incorporating his personal physique into his apply and utilizing it as a automobile for the works themselves. In items similar to his 1965 Vienna Stroll, for instance, Brus painted himself white with a black stripe down the centre of his face and physique—turning himself into a picture which may recall a piece by Franz Kline or Jackson Pollock—earlier than strolling round Vienna’s Heldenplatz sq.. (The work ended when a police officer ticketed him for disturbing the peace.)
Alongside his fellow Actionists, Brus’s work grew each within the extremity of its boundary-pushing use of the physique and in its specific political messaging. In 1968, the Actionists have been invited to carry out on the College of Vienna, the place they staged the work Artwork and Revolution, which concerned Brus urinating, defecating, masturbating and slicing himself all whereas singing the Austrian nationwide anthem. This efficiency led to Brus being prosecuted for “degrading symbols of the state” and, as a way to keep away from imprisonment, he fled to West Berlin together with his spouse and daughter, the place the household lived for a decade earlier than returning to Austria. “In Berlin we discovered an open and tolerant, liberal society,” he advised The New York Instances in 2018. “My spouse didn’t even know what the police appeared like for the primary two years.”
Günter Brus, set up view, Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2024 Photograph: Stefan Wagner. Courtesy of the artist. © Günter Brus, Kunsthaus Bregenz
A 1970 efficiency titled The Actual Take a look at, which included self-injurious behaviour similar to slicing himself with a razor blade and beating himself, proved to be Brus’s remaining efficiency, as he felt that he had reached his bodily restrict. For the remainder of his profession, his work shifted to different media, together with drawings, work, movies and what he described as image poems, lots of which contained each written textual content and illustration. “I couldn’t maintain these heavy accidents any extra,” he mentioned in a 2016 interview with The Artwork Newspaper. “My actions weren’t theatrical like Nitsch’s or Mühl’s; they associated to me and I couldn’t proceed this self-harm ceaselessly.”
Although he remained most generally recognized for his Actionist performances, these occurred for lower than a decade, and it was his subsequent physique of labor—notably the drawings and work—that might maintain Brus’s profession over the following many years and comprise the majority of his oeuvre. The first issues of those later works remained constant together with his performances: in them, Brus regularly rendered photographs of the physique in varied contortions and interpretations, and he by no means ceased to discover and draw upon our most primal drives and instincts.
