Schüttbild (red)

Details

We would like to thank Gudrun Maracek, Nitsch Foundation, for her help with the cataloguing. The work is registered in the Nitsch Foundation under the archive number K_011_99.

Provenance:

The artist’s studio;

Private collection, Great Britain.

Description

– Typical, colour-intensive poured image in red, depicting the performative creative process

– Nitsch has written art history with his “Orgy-Mystery-Games” at the Prinzendorf Castle in Austria, which are regularly performed as a total work of art

– The artist, who died in 2022, was recently honoured with exhibitions at the Martin Gropius Bau Berlin, the Albertina Vienna and the newly opened Vienna Actionism Museum (WAM)

Hermann Nitsch’s “Schüttbilder” are icons of Viennese Actionism. In 1960, Nitsch carried out his first scandalous performances in which animal blood was poured onto the painting surface. From these first actions, he successively developed the principle of the “Schüttbild”, in which red paint was later applied to jute or burlap with brushes, sponges, but also directly from the can. The present pouring is a snapshot of a painting action in which the artist’s gestures are echoed. Even when dry, the colour remains perceptible as a mass that thickens in the upper area and runs downwards in narrow rivulets. Nitsch understands the intensity of the creative process as a cathartic act of artistic self-expression.