Günter Brus (born 27 September 1938, Ardning, Styria,

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

) is an

n painter, performance artist, graphic artist, experimental filmmaker and writer. Brus grew up in

Mureck Mureck ( sl, Cmurek, archaic: ''Cmürek'') is a municipality in the district of Südoststeiermark in the Austrian state of Styria. Administrative reforms in Styria led to the merging on 1 January 2015 of the formerly separate municipalities of Mur ...

, attended the Kunstgewerbeschule Graz and went to Vienna in 1956, where he studied painting and met his lifelong friend Alfons Schilling. Influenced by

German expressionism German Expressionism () consisted of several related creative movements in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central ...

, Edvard Munch,

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inc ...

, abstract expressionism and artists such as

Emilio Vedova Emilio Vedova (9 August 1919 – 25 October 2006) was a modern Italian painter. He is considered one of the most important artists to emerge from Italy's artistic scene, Arte Informale. Early life Vedova was born in Venice into a working-cl ...

, he began in the fall of 1960 to create artwork that was not confined to visual media. His companion Otto Muehl, who met him at the time, said of his work: “The color sometimes exploded like a bomb when it hit the picture. That was total creative excess. ..The entire room was covered with paint splatters, and the dried paint sludge lay inches high on the floor. ” Shortly before his first major exhibition together with Schilling, he was conscripted into the military in May 1961. After completing his military service, he fell into a psychological crisis and did not start work again until the end of 1962. In 1964, Brus performed his first performance, the working title Ana. From the beginning it was essential for him to put his own body at the center of the action, and in the three-part second action, hand painting and head painting. He was a co-founder in 1964 of

Viennese Actionism Viennese Actionism was a short-lived art movement in the late 20th-century that spanned the 1960s into the 1970s. It is regarded as part of the independent efforts made during the 1960s to develop the issues of performance art, Fluxus, happening ...

(german: link=no, Wiener Aktionismus with Otto Muehl,

Hermann Nitsch Hermann Nitsch (29 August 1938 – 18 April 2022) was an Austrian contemporary artist and composer. His art encompassed wide-scale performances incorporating theater, multimedia, rituals and acted violence. He was a leading figure of Viennese Ac ...

, and

Rudolf Schwarzkogler Rudolf Schwarzkogler (13 November 1940 – 20 June 1969) was an Austrian performance artist closely associated with the Viennese Actionism group that included artists Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, and Hermann Nitsch. He was born the son of a doct ...

. His aggressively presented actionism intentionally disregarded conventions and taboos, with the intent of shocking the viewer. Sentenced to 6 months in prison after the ''Kunst und Revolution'' event at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich hist ...

in 1968, he fled to Berlin with his family and returned to Austria in 1976. Brus urinated into a glass then proceeded to cover his body in his own excrement, and ended the piece by drinking his own urine. During the performance Brus also sang the

Austrian National Anthem The national anthem of Austria (), also known by its incipit "" (; ), was adopted in 1946. The melody, originally attributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart but now disputed among various composers (most probably by ), was matched with a text by Paul ...

while masturbating. Brus ended the piece by vomiting and was subsequently arrested. Through this piece and his other performance works, Brus hoped to reveal the still fascist essence of the nation. This performance created a public outrage at the time and was dubbed by the media "University Piggy." Brus also was editor of the ''Schastrommel'' (author's edition) from 1969 on. He was involved into the NO!Art movement. In 1966 he was with Gustav Metzger, Otto Muehl, Wolf Vostell,

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up i ...

and others a participant of the Destruction in Art Symposium (''DIAS'') in London. Günter Brus participated in

Documenta 5 documenta 5 was the fifth edition of documenta, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition. It was held between 30 June and 8 October 1972 in Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hes ...

in Kassel in 1972 and was represented as an artist at Documenta 6 (1977) and Documenta 7 in 1982. From 1970 he began on his novel Irrwisch, which was underpinned by numerous drawings. Works emerged that he calls picture poems which opened a new section in Brus's work, the fruit of which is the rich graphic and literary work of the 1970s and 1980s. Brus was awarded the

Grand Austrian State Prize The Grand Austrian State Prize () is a decoration given annually by Austria to an artist for exceptional work. The recipient must be an Austrian citizen with a permanent residence in Austria. It was originally created in 1950 by then education mi ...

in 1996. Most of his works are shocking and controversial. The Joanneum now houses a permanent gallery, called the Bruseum, featuring the work of Brus and fellow Viennese Actionists. Brus has been a columnist and illustrator for the Austrian monthly magazine Datum since summer 2005. He lives and works in Graz and on the Canary Islands. Kurt Flecker, then cultural advisor for Styria, laid the foundation stone for his own Brus Museum in 2008 with a collection purchase for the Neue Galerie Graz. The "BRUSEUM", which opened on November 26, 2011 at the new location of the Neue Galerie Graz in the Joanneumsviertel, is designed as a permanent high-profile exhibition space. It is dedicated to the preservation of central works of the artist. In 2010, Berlin-based

art film An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily f ...

home video company Edition Kröthenhayn released a boxset including a DVD containing his films (including, inter alia, ''8/64: Ana – Aktion Brus'', ''10c/65: Brus wünscht euch seine Weihnachten'', ''10b/65: Silber – Aktion Brus'', ''10/65: Selbstverstümmelung'', ''16/67: 20. September'', ''Die Blumen des Bösen'', ''Strangulation'', ''Psycho-Dramolett'', ''Kunst und Revolution'', ''Osmose'', ''Einatmen – Ausatmen'', ''Handlung'', ''Zerreißprobe'', ''Selbstbemalung'', and ''Wiener Spaziergang''), directed by, among others, Kurt Kren, Hans Christof Stenzel, Peter Gorsen, Ernst Schmidt Jr., Helmut Kronberger, Werner Schulz, Otto Muehl, as well as by Brus himself and his wife Anni Brus, compiled and presented in a documentary format by Peter Kasperak, with a total running length of 82 minutes in a limited edition of a thousand hand-numbered copies under the title ''Körperanalysen: Aktionen 1964–1970''. The DVD further features a 2004 52-minutes television documentary film about Brus called ''Schrecklich verletzlich – Günter Brus'' directed by Peter Kasperak, Anita Natmessnig, and Adam Wallisch as well as many slide shows of Actionism photography by Ludwig Hoffenreich and others. The boxset also sports a 100-pages book with photos and texts by

Peter Weibel Peter Weibel (; born 5 March 1944 in Odessa, USSR) is an internationally known Austrian post-conceptual artist, curator and new media theoretician. He started out in 1964 as a visual poet but soon jumped from the page to the screen within the sen ...

and Theo Altenberg. His wife Ana played an essential role in Brus' work. In a newspaper interview in 2018, she said that she took part in Rudolf Schwarzkogler's "Wedding" campaign because Schwarzkogler's wife would never have been willing to show her breasts and Schwarzkogler was too shy to ask a woman. In addition, she once obtained 40 condoms from a pharmacy for an action from Hermann Nitsch because Nitsch did not dare to buy them himself.

Selected exhibitions

2018: ''Unruhe nach dem Sturm - Günter Brus'', Belvedere 21, Vienna, Austria
2011: ''Staging Action: Performance in Photography since 1960'', MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
2010: ''Ruptures and Continuities: Photography Made after 1960 from the MFAH Collection'', The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA
2006: ''Primal Secretions: A Günter Brus Retrospective'', Slought Foundation, Philadelphia, USA
2006: ''Into Me/Out of Me'', P.S.1. MoMa, New York, USA
2005: ''Nervous Stillness on the Horizon'', MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani, Barcelona, Spain
2005: ''Viaggio intorno all’opera - Una retrospettiva dal 1960 al 1996'', Galleria d'Arte Moderna I GAM, Bologna, Italy
2004: ''Behind the Facts. Interfunktionen 1968 – 1975'',

Fundació Joan Miró The Fundació Joan Miró ( ; "Joan Miró Foundation, Centre of Studies of Contemporary Art") is a museum of modern art honoring Joan Miró located on the hill called Montjuïc in Barcelona, Catalonia (Spain). History The idea for the foundation ...

, Barcelona, Spain
1996: ''Out of Action'', Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA
1993: ''Retrospektive „Sichtgrenze – Limité du visible“'', Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
1986: ''Retrospektive „Der Überblick", Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts'', Vienna, Lenbachhaus Munich, Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Germany

References

External links

Archivio Conz

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brus, Gunter 1938 births Living people Obscenity controversies in art 20th-century Austrian painters Austrian male painters 21st-century Austrian painters 21st-century male artists Austrian male writers Austrian film directors Austrian experimental filmmakers German-language film directors Austrian contemporary artists 20th-century Austrian male artists

Selected exhibitions

References

Further reading

External links