Günter Brus
Ardning 1938 - 2024 GrazGünter Brus was born in Ardning, Styria, in 1938. After his education at the School Of Arts and Crafts in Graz from 1954 to 1958, he attended the Academy Of Fine Arts in Vienna, where he left after two years without a degree. In his early works, Brus devoted himself to informal drawing and painting. During this time, he already met the artists, who would become the most significant representatives of the Viennese Actionism in the years to come: Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. As one of the main representatives of the Austrian avant-garde, Günter Brus followed the developments of the 1960ies with the “aesthetic dissolution of boundaries of the modern era to the body-centred, performative process and installation art”. By his first action in 1964, “Ana”, Brus’ intense examination of the body as medium in the performative act and the transition to painting of the own body began. The 1960ies were characterized by body actions, like the “Viennese Walk” (“Wiener Spaziergang”) in 1965 or the spectacular “Art and revolution” (“Kunst und Revolution”) in the NIG of the University Vienna in 1968. The latter caused a conviction and a six-month incarceration, which led the artist to flee to Berlin. Body and destruction are two of the main themes of the works of the artist. Thus, self-mutilation followed the painting of the own body, which reached a pinnacle in Günter Brus’ last action in 1970, called “Pull test” (“Zerreißprobe”).
In the 1970ies, Brus engaged in drawing again. The works of these years are graphic language games with complex referrals. In the midst of the 1970ies, Brus increasingly began to publish lyrical works. A great number of image-text-cycles emerged, which were called image poetry by Brus. In 2008, the foundation of the “Bruseum” was laid – a museum for Günter Brus at the Neue Galerie Graz.
The artist was awarded several prizes, like the Great Austrian Prize of the State for Applied Arts and the Oskar-Kokoschka-Prize, just to name two. Works of Günter Brus are in the property amongst the Belvedere Museum, MAK, MUMOK, the Neue Galerie Graz, Museum Liaunig in the Carinthian Neuhaus, in the Stately Museums in Berlin and the MAC Musée d’Art Contemporain in Marseille.