SAATCHI GALLERY
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SELECTED WORKS BY Hermann Nitsch



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Hermann Nitsch

Aktion Painting - Fresco

1981
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas

202 x 320cm

His Fresco, with its connotations of martyrdom and penance, is fixed with the tortured bust of a 'saint', a site of devotional worship as horrifically compelling as an ossuary or catacomb.

Much is made of Hermann Nitsch as cult provocateur, but he is first and foremost an artist: his performances and rituals are painstakingly planned in the context and language of art. Each 'Aktion' is premeditated through preparatory drawings and paintings, reflecting Hermann Nitsch's influence by, and position within, the predominant movements spanning his career.


Hermann Nitsch

Splatter Painting

1986
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas

200 x 300cm

Hailed by many as the Pope of Viennese 'Aktionism', Hermann Nitsch, together with Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, and Rudolf Schwartzkogler, reformed the face of sixties art, shunning the illusionary confines of traditional painting and sculpture, reinventing an art that exists in real, corporeal, and violent terms.

Hermann Nitsch was celebrated and reviled in equal measure as he took the semblance of a pagan ceremony and incorporated robed processions, symbolic crucifixion, drunken excess, nudity, animal sacrifice, the drinking of blood, and the ritualistic incorporation of viscera and entrails. Even today, his audiences aren't mere visitors, but active participants in his artistic liturgies.

Hermann Nitsch's work draws parallels between religion and the ritualistic spiritualism of creativity. Heavily entrenched in ancient philosophy and a dissident, questioning Christian theology, he actively seeks catharsis through pain and compassion, a rigorously disciplined quest for ethereal release and enlightenment through an embracing of primal instinct and ancient sacrament.


Hermann Nitsch

Splatter Painting

1986
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas

186 x 260cm


Hermann Nitsch

Splatter Painting

1983
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas

190 x 300cm


Hermann Nitsch

Splatter Painting

1990
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas

200 x 300cm


Hermann Nitsch

Splatter Painting

1983
Acrylic on Canvas

200 x 300cm

The blank canvases incorporated as backdrops to his performances are sometimes smeared in blood, while others are violently attacked with symbolic red and purple paint. In the gallery, Hermann Nitsch's 'Splatter' paintings exist as holy 'relics': icons of metaphysical significance, radiating an aura of edification. They convey a terrible beauty, a sublime contemplation of life, violence, transgression and extremity.


Hermann Nitsch

Golden Love

1974
Mulitmedia Collage

200 x 300cm

In Golden Love, Hermann Nitsch presents a monumental collage. In his panel of bedazzling candy-coloured pop, images of babies sit alongside animal carcasses, flowers, and sexual perversion, in an unlikely remix reminiscent of Robert Rauschenberg's combines. Borrowing from the geometric design of the era, Hermann Nitsch's grid-like display lies somewhere between science textbook precision and the impassioned fervour of a religious zealot; pain and pleasure are united in a work which is the epitome of middle-class subversion and corrupted decadence.


Hermann Nitsch

Process

1982
Collage on Canvas

240 x 140cm

Process is a visual dissection of a painting. Here Hermann Nitsch's trademark gore is thinned to a rapturous rosy pink, both hopeful and grotty. Nitsch encloses his Masonic-esque symbols on their own separate plane, his element of collage both a quarantine from, and contamination of, the delicate surface below.


Hermann Nitsch

The Last Supper

1976-9
Pencil and Pen on Paper

155 x 370cm

The Last Supper was a work Hermann Nitsch originally conceived and mounted at the French Cultural Centre in Milan. Based on Leonardo da Vinci's famous fresco (housed in the same city), Hermann Nitsch's performative response was finalised as an installation consisting of a table, surrounded by twelve pictures, and a large canvas symbolic of Christ.

In this drawing, Hermann Nitsch works through his conception of the Christian story of betrayal, repentance, and forgiveness. Depicting each figure as an anatomical diagram, he plays on the concept of the Eucharist: spiritual cleansing through the eating of blood and flesh.

The Christ figure in the centre is rendered in red as an emanating energy force; neither good nor evil, his face is a skull-like mask bearing the inane mischievous grin of a Mona Lisa smile.


Hermann Nitsch

Six Day Play

1998
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas

200 x 300cm

In 1957, Hermann Nitsch declared that all of his performances were merely preparation for his lifelong ambition of the Six Day Play. In August 1998, this monumental project was realised as his 100th 'Aktion': a re-enactment of the story of creation. By far his most decadent execution, Hermann Nitsch declared this project to be his pinnacle.



ARTIST INFORMATION




Hermann Nitsch's BIOGRAPHY



1938
Born Vienna, Austria

1948-56
School of Graphic Design and Photography, Vienna


SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS


2004
Mike Weiss Gallery, New York
Graphische Sammlung im Städelmuseum, Frankfurt

2003
Retrospective Kulturamt Köflach, Sammlung
Essl

2002
Lehraktion Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
Video presentation of the most recent Aktion performances, Kunsthalle
Krems

2001
Das große Bodenbild as part of the Master
Works series, Belvedere Museum, Vienna
O.M. Theater Projects United, Hürlimann Areal, Zurich
Das 6 Tage Spiel 1998 Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin

1999
Orchestra concert: the music of the 6 Day Play performed at the ORF Radiokulturhaus, Vienna, Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum
der Gegenwart, Berlin, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der BRD, Bonn

1999
Exhibition of relics, relic installations and videos
of the 6 Tage Spiel 1998 (6 Day Play) Museum Moderner Kunst
Stiftung Ludwig Vienna, Palais Liechtenstein, Kiscelli Museum, Budapest

1998
The 6 Day Play of the Orgien Mysterien Theater,
performed at Prinzendorf Palace

1998
Renato Zanella, ballet director of the Vienna State
Opera, choreographs the ballet Mythos to the music of Nitsch’s
string sextet Dionysos

1996
96. Aktion, 12 hours, San Marino, Naples

1995
The Vienna State Opera commissions Hermann Nitsch
with the set design and direction of the opera Hérodiade by Jules Massenet, Nitsch co-directs the opera with Richard Bietschacher

1995
Retrospective Exhibition, Künstlerhaus
Vienna

1990
Rupertinum, Salzburg; Galleria Civica d´arte Contemporanea,
Trient; Nationalgalerie, Prague; Kunsthalle, Krems

1988
First major Retrospective Exhibition, Lenbachhaus,
Munich
Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts, Vienna

1984
The 72-hour 80th Aktion (three days
and nights of the 6 Day Play), performed in Prinzendorf

1982
Documenta VII Kassel, Germany

1974
The 24-hour 50th Aktion (1 day and 1 night
of the 6 Day Play), performed in Prinzendorf

1972
Documenta V Kassel, Germany

1971
Acquisition of Prinzendorf Palace

1966
20 Aktion London

1960-66
Aktionen: Aktion performances and exhibitions
in Vienna, which result in several court trials and three prison terms

 
 

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