Hermann Nitsch

Hermann Nitsch 1938 Vienna - lives and works in Prinzendorf/Lower Austria The Austrian painter and action artist Hermann Nitsch is born in Vienna on August 29, 1938. Like Günter Brus, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Otto Muehl and Adolf Frohner, Hermann Nitsch is one of the main protagonists of "Viennese Actionism". Hermann Nitsch's talent for drawing and his penchant for art became apparent early on, and in 1953 Hermann Nitsch began an apprenticeship as a commercial artist at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna; he was employed as a graphic artist by the Technical Museum in Vienna from 1957. As early as 1955, he produced drawings that show Hermann Nitsch's interest in religious themes as well as his enthusiasm for the great painters of the past. But it is not the virtuosity of form and the study of nature but rather the powerfully expressive abstraction that he chooses for his characteristic "Schüttbilder" with blood-red paint and for his action art. Hermann Nitsch delves into the cultural history of mankind, the Gesamtkunstwerk as such fascinates him and what Hermann Nitsch finally strives for with the "Orgien Mysterien Theater", which he develops further and further, is an all-encompassing primordial drama, an existential festival that culminates in redemption. In 1959 Hermann Nitsch visited an exhibition of works by the Nouvelle École de Paris at the Vienna Künstlerhaus, which brought together a wide variety of artists from the fields of lyrical abstraction, Tachism and Informel. In 1960 the first "Schüttbilder" are created. Together with the like-minded artists of "Viennese Actionism" he takes up the current manifestations of the American concept of performance and happening and continues them in a provocative and excessive way; action art becomes action theater. Thus Hermann Nitsch, Otto Muehl and Adolf Frohner realize the three-part action "Die Blutorgel" (The Blood Organ) in Vienna from June 1 to 4, 1962, in which the artists allow themselves to be walled up in Muehl's basement studio in the first part, "Einkerkerung" (Incarceration). In the second part, the incarcerated produce works of art: Frohner object montages, Muehl "junk sculptures," Nitsch a "Schüttbild." In the third and most important part, the "Ausmauerung", the artists and their works are uncovered again by the audience, then the artists perform the crucifixion, disembowelment and tearing of a lamb. White fabrics reinforce the contrast of the colors. Hermann Nitsch, Otto Muehl and Adolf Frohner publish a manifesto on the action. Further spectacular, excessive actions were to follow and Hermann Nitsch was sentenced to prison three times as a result, prompting him to temporarily leave Austria in 1966. Orgies Mysteries Theater 1966 Hermann Nitsch and other "Viennese Actionists" are invited by Gustav Metzger to the "Destruction in Art Symposium" in London, where his performed action is enthusiastically received by the audience, but aborted by the London police. From 1967 Hermann Nitsch lives in Munich, he successfully strives for an international career as an action artist and travels to New York, Cincinnati and Cologne to perform his actions. In 1971 the purchase of Prinzendorf Castle in Lower Austria takes place. In 1973 the "Association for the Promotion of the Orgien Mysterien Theater" is founded there. Since 1974 until today performances of Hermann Nitsch's six-day play of the "Orgien Mysterien Theater" take place in the castle Prinzendorf, which wants to be "at the same time folk festival and mystery of existence brought to consciousness". Hermann Nitsch publicly slaughters animals, pours their entrails onto naked human bodies, uses blood as paint in the beginning, later it is blood-red paint with which everything is soaked. In all the performances of the painting actions of Hermann Nitsch, understood as a theater of orgies and mysteries, which he performs all over the world, it is about the immediate experience, the real sensual feeling with all five senses, which takes place without words. The resulting paintings, as well as the splattered painting shirts that Nitsch and his assistants wear in the process, are relics of these actions. In his late work, Hermann Nitsch additionally uses other color tones, such as yellow as the color of light and resurrection, and opulently colorful, life-affirming color symphonies are created. Painting action as an existential festival with a sacral character 1972 Hermann Nitsch participates in Documenta 5 in Kassel, curated by Harald Szeemann, which is dedicated to "individual mythologies." In 1982, he is again a participant in Documenta 7. In the 1970s, a friendship develops with the collector and patron Giuseppe Morra, who in 2008 establishes the Museo Archivio Laboratorio per le Arti Contemporanee Hermann Nitsch in Naples. Already in 2007 the Hermann Nitsch Museum opens in Mistelbach. In 2009, the Nitsch Foundation is established to document and communicate Hermann Nitsch's life's work, which continues to polarize in its archaic and provocative aesthetics. Hermann Nitsch's actions give rise to powerful works of art that are held in the most important private and public collections worldwide, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Tate Britain in London, the Museum Moderner Kunst - Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna. Hermann Nitsch lives and works in Prinzendorf. In 2022, the latest six-day performance of Hermann Nitsch's "Orgien Mysterien Theater" will take place as the 160th action in Prinzendorf Castle and the surrounding area.