Untitled

Details

With a signed expertise by Hermann Nitsch dated 7.4.2009. Provenance: Private collection, Italy.

Description

• Striking work on canvas
• The “Schüttbilder” by Hermann Nitsch are icons of Viennese Actionism
• The Pace Gallery in New York showed “Selected Paintings, Actions, Relics, and Musical Scores, 1962-2020”, a retrospective exhibition of the artist, who died in 2022, at the beginning of this year Hermann Nitsch’s Schüttbilder are icons of Viennese Action Painting. He carried out his first scandalous performances, in which animal blood was poured onto the surfaces of his paintings, in 1960. From these first actions he gradually developed the principle of the “pouring painting”, in which red paint was later applied to jute or rags using brushes and sponges, but also directly from the can. The present pouring from 2008 is a snapshot of a painting action in which the artist’s gestures are echoed. Even when dry, we can see how the colour forms a mass that accumulates in the upper area of the work and runs down in narrow rivulets. Nitsch sees the violence of the creative process as an act of artistic self-denial with a cathartic effect.