The Zuecca Projects, in Venice, is showcasing Hermann Nitsch 20th Painting Action.
A solo exhibition of Hermann Nitsch, an Austrian artist among the founders and leading figures of Viennese Actionism, who passed away on April 18 of this year.
The title of the exhibition also describes its content, as it is indeed the twentieth painting action presented by Nitsch at the Wiener Secession in Vienna back in 1987.
Hermann Nitsch 20th Painting Action
When Hermann Nitsch first presented 20th Painting Action, the art critic Ludwig Hevesi said, “To every era, its art. To art, its freedom.”
This is, even today, the most fitting spirit to approach the artist’s work.
It is a symbolic exhibition of what it means to test the boundaries of freedom.
Nitsch works on these immense white canvases onto which he pours, using the pouring technique, red paint infused with a mystical energy and a visionary intoxication.
Visiting the exhibition is a totalizing experience that envelops the viewer from every angle, making them feel surrounded and thus part of the artworks.
The red color, applied to the canvas so impulsively, creates an irregular and continuous rhythm that results from the ever-present dichotomies in Nitsch’s art, such as: rationality and irrationality, finite and infinite, day and night, form and chaos, stable and mobile.
The same Nitsch participates in his works: in creating them, he becomes a priest officiating a rite that straddles the sacred and the profane. This explains the presence, although not in all the canvases, of the white coat stained, dirty, and splattered with color.
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But what is Viennese Actionism?
Viennese Actionism, in German Wiener Aktionismus, is an artistic movement that originated in the Austrian capital in the early 1960s and draws from performance art and happenings while transforming into a completely different practice.
Actionism is indeed much less known compared to the other two forms of art mentioned, characterized by the use of images and themes so strong that they are intolerable to some, including: self-harm, sexual practices, violence as a tool for human freedom, rituals that are biblical between the religious and the esoteric.
The artistic actions consist of the progressive transition of artists from canvas to body where initially only paint is transferred and gradually replaced with other elements such as blood, organic materials, waste, or animal entrails.
For these reasons, most representatives of Actionism have faced numerous attacks or accusations that have led them to prison sentences of several years; Nitsch himself was convicted in Austria three times, forcing him to move to Germany.
Others who faced severe consequences include Otto Mühl and Rudolf Schwarzkogler, the former expatriated to Portugal while the latter died by suicide at just 28 years old.
The exhibition Hermann Nitsch 20th Painting Action is open until July 20, 2022.
On Artsupp you will find the city's full calendar with opening hours and tickets.
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