Hermann Nitsch, blood and acrylic on canvas, 1989
This Austrian artist, with great interest for philosophy and psychology, is one of the founders of Viennese Actionism which is closely associated with the Fluxus movement. He criticized the Western culture and its consumption behaviour, and inspired by old sacrificial rituals he searched for the boundaries of art.
Under the name ‘Orgien-Mysterien-Theater’, he executed bloody happenings. The artist, with literary interests, freed himself from the social order to return, as it were, to the primal urges of mankind. The world is hypocrite, so he thought, and wanted to break through all kinds of taboos with lurid visual art. Hermann Nitsch brought artistic purification through ‘rebirth’ in a post-war context.
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