Günter Brus

Günter Brus (born September 27, 1938 in Ardning in Styria ) is an Austrian action artist and painter .

Günter Brus is one of the most radical representatives of Viennese actionism . In 1970 he was sentenced to six months of more severe arrest for “degrading the Austrian state symbols” (shortly before this form of punishment was abolished). He lived in exile in West Berlin for a long time in order to avoid imprisonment. While he caused a sensation in the 1960s, especially with his actions, he has returned to drawing since the early 1970s .

life and work

Günter Brus grew up in Mureck , attended the Kunstgewerbeschule Graz and went to Vienna in 1956 , where he studied painting and met his closest friend Alfons Schilling over the next few years .

Impressed by German expressionism at the turn of the century, by Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh , then also by abstract expressionism and artists such as B. Emilio Vedova , he began in the fall of 1960 with a radically gestural painting that broke the image format. Brusen's works from this period are attempts to break out of the classic panel painting . His later companion Otto Muehl , who got to know him at the time, remembers: “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, the dried paint sludge lay centimeters high on the floor. ”In May 1961, shortly before his first major exhibition with Schilling, he had to join the military . After completing his military service, he got into a mental crisis and did not start work again until the end of 1962. Brusen's striving to break out of the medium of 'image' becomes clearer. In the following, 'spatial images' are created in which the formal limits of the canvas no longer play a role.

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. Head painting. Head painting , a self- painting process that took several hours, he was also satisfied with the process. He turned away from painting and carried out numerous actions ( self- painting II , self-mutilation , tetanus , transfusion , torture ). All of these "actions" are to be seen as a further development of informal painting and painting and handling colors continue to play a central role.

In 1966, Brus and Muehl designed the idea of total action as a connection between Muehl's material action and Brus' self-mutilation . A first sample was given at the Destruction in Art Symposium in London.

In 1967, in the work Osmose, Pullover, Einatmen - Ausatmen he dealt with the subject of birth through body language and integrated his little daughter Diana into his 23rd action. Brus' work continued in the direction of total body analysis: he urinated and defecated during the actions, scratched his skin with razor blades and masturbated. At the latest in the action The citizen Brus observes his body (1968) it becomes clear that the actions are also intended as criticism of the state. In the same year there was a scandal at an event that went down in art history , which was dubbed by the media as “ university piggy ” and as a result of which he was prosecuted and sentenced and finally went into exile. His last action (June 1970), with which he once again tried to go to all physical limits, was appropriately called the ultimate test .

Günter Brus participated in Documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972 in the Individual Mythologies department and was represented as an artist at Documenta 6 (1977) and Documenta 7 in 1982.

Brus had already accompanied his entire actionist work with drawings and paintings. From 1970 he began with the novel Irrwisch , which was underpinned by numerous drawings, and developed new possibilities for a combination of literature and visual arts. Works emerged which he calls picture poems and which open up a new section in Brusen's work, the fruit of which is the rich graphic and literary work of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1996 he received the Grand Austrian State Prize for Fine Arts for his life's work .

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 at the time, laid the foundation stone for his own Brus Museum in 2008 when he bought a collection for the Neue Galerie Graz . The "BRUSEUM", which opened on November 26th, 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 as well as the scientific processing of his work.

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 friend 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. At the time, the pharmacy seller did not dare to call the product by name either.

Exhibitions

1986: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich, Günter brus - The overview, April 9 - June 1, 1986
1999: Kunsthalle Tübingen , Günter Brus. Fluorescent Poetry , October 16 - December 12, 1999.
2016: Martin-Gropius-Bau , Berlin: Günter Brus. Fault zones . Catalog.
2018: Austrian Gallery Belvedere , Günter Brus. Unrest after the storm , February 2 - August 12, 2018.
2019: W&K - Wienerroither & Kohlbacher , Palais Schönborn-Batthyány : Günter Brus. The loneliness of the late classic , September 24th - November 22nd, 2019.
Permanent: Joanneum, Graz: Bruseum (with changing themes).

Publications

Exhibition catalog: Günter Brus - Fault Zones .
VESCON art catalog 2007 - scratch marks. Günter Brus .
Günter Brus: fluorescent poetry and sign surgery. published on the occasion of the exhibition "Leuchtstoff-Poesie" - Bild-Dichtungen 1970–1998; Kunsthalle Tübingen , October 16 - December 12, 1999, Kunsthalle Kiel, January 16 - March 21, 2000, Neue Galerie der Stadt Linz, April 13 - June 4, 2000 / Günter Brus [Ill.] ISBN 3-7701- 5059-7 .

Awards

1981 Austrian Art Prize for Fine Arts
1992 Prize of the State of Styria for fine arts
1996 Grand Austrian State Prize for Fine Arts
2004 Oskar Kokoschka Prize
2013 Great Golden Decoration of the State of Styria with the star
2018 Decoration of Honor of the State of Styria for Science, Research and Art

literature

Roman Grabner, Günter Brus: The loneliness of the late classic. Exhibition catalog. Ebi Kohlbacher, Lui Wienerroither (eds.). W&K Edition, Vienna 2019, ISBN 978-3-200-06557-4 .

Kalina Kupczynska: Unsuccessful attempt to learn to fly - manifestos of Viennese actionism . Würzburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-8260-4708-4 .

Peter Noever (Ed.): Günter Brus, aurore de minuit, midnight dawn, midnight red . MAK, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-900688-89-3 , (exhibition catalog: Austrian Museum for Applied Art, Contemporary Art, Vienna, September 10, 2008 - January 25, 2009).

Rosemarie Brucher: "We are healed through his wounds". Self-harm as a substitute act in Günter Brus' action art . Löcker, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-85409-499-9 .

Dietmar Haubernhofer (Ed.): Günter Brus. Scratch marks. scratchmarks. (Etchings and lithographs, 1971–2007) . Springer, Vienna a. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-211-75903-5 .

Oliver Jahrhaus: The Action of Viennese Actionism : Subversion and Disposition of Consciousness . Munich 2001. (The problem potential of the post-war avant-garde).

Kerstin Braun: The Viennese Actionism. Positions and Principles . Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 1999.

Hubert Klocker (Hrsg.): Wiener Aktionismus. Volume 2: Vienna 1960–1971. Günter Brus, Otto Muehl , Hermann Nitsch , Rudolf Schwarzkogler . Ritter, Klagenfurt 1989, ISBN 3-85415-062-8 . (Exhibition catalog: Graphic Collection Albertina, Vienna, March / April 1989; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, August / September 1989).

Otto Muehl: Way out of the swamp . AA-Verlag, Nuremberg 1977, ISBN 3-85386-006-0 . (Muehl's autobiography, from which the above quotation is taken).