WIENER AKTIONISMUS
Wiener aktionismus, or Vienna Actionism spanned
the entire decade of the 1960s in Vienna, Austria,
and was attributed to the collaborative work of
four important artists: Gunther Brus (1938–),
Otto Muehl (1925–), Herman Nitsch (1938–), and
Rudolf Schwarzkogler (1940–1969). These artists
were never formally organized as a group; and an
art critic coined the name ‘‘Vienna Actionism’’ only
at the end of their productive period. But they met
each other early on, and collaborated throughout
the 1960s on actions based upon a shared concern
for Freudian theories of the unconscious: reactions
to a post-war, post Fascist political environment in
Austria and a mutual desire to extend the ideas of
action painting to dramatic use of the human body
as an artistic medium. Their work was notorious
for its public nudity, use of animal cadavers and
blood, and its seemingly flagrant disregard for
social taboos and religious symbols.
Gunter Brus was interested in Viennese expres-
sionism and the contemporary Austrian abstract art
of Arnulf Rainer. After formal training at the Acad-
emy of Applied Arts in Vienna, he began to free
himself from the academic canon of easel painting.
Otto Muehl, impressed by his work introduced him
to Herman Nitsch in 1962. In 1964 he performed his
first two actions. Brus performed actions through
the 1960s until 1968 when he was arrested and
sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for degrad-
ing symbols of the state. He remained in exile in
Berlin until 1976, and then returned to Vienna after
his sentence was commuted to a fine.
Otto Muehl studied at the University of Vienna
in 1948 following a tour of military service and
duty on the Western Front in World War II.
After a one-man show at the Galerie Junge Gen-
eration in 1960, he met Brus, who became a new
influence. He abandoned easel painting in 1961,
met Nitsch in 1962, and performed his first action
in his studio flat using a naked model in 1963.
Muehl performed actions throughout the 1960s
and spent two weeks in prison in 1965 for his action
with Nitsch—The Festival of Psycho-Physical Nat-
uralism. By the 1970s, his communal life and
Actions-Analytical Commune, influenced by Wil-
helm Reich, took precedence over his art. In June
1991, he was sentenced to seven years’ imprison-
ment for ‘‘engaging in sexual intercourse with min-
ors, illicit sexual acts, rape, and drug offences.’’ He
now lives in Portugal.
Herman Nitsch studied Baroque and Renais-
sance religious painting at the School of Graphic
Art in Vienna, concentrating on crucifixions. In
1957, he conceived the Orgies Mysteries Theater,
and by 1959, this concept had advanced to a six-
day play to be housed in the Prinzendorf Castle.
This became Nitcsh’s life work. In 1963, he was
sentenced with Muehl to two weeks in prison for
their Festival of Psycho-Physical Naturalism (his
third action). Nitsch performed throughout the
1960s using lamb cadavers, animal blood, and
naked male and female bodies, raising controversy
and public protest. Nitsch was the only artist of the
group to continue performing actions into the
1970s. In 1971, he purchased Prinzendorf Castle,
and in August of 1998, performed the six-day play
there at the castle in its entirety, realizing a life-long
artistic goal.
Rudolf Schwarzkogler, the youngest of the
group attended the School of Graphic Art in
Vienna, leaving without a diploma in 1961. That
same year he met Nitsch, became interested in
early Austrian expressionism, and admired Arnulf
Rainer and Yves Klein, as well as the writers
Artaud, and Hans Henny Jahnn. In 1965, he inte-
grated an action into Nitsch’s seventh action. A few
weeks later he became the model for Nitsch’s
eighth action, or ‘‘penis rinsing.’’ The careful sta-
ging of Nitsch’s actions specifically for the camera
and photograph was a strong influence on the
young Schwarzkogler. His final action,no. 6per-
formed alone for the camera in his flat with Edith
Adam in Vienna in 1966, gave him perfect control
over aesthetics and ritualistic statement. After col-
laborating on Nitsch’s thirtieth action in Munich
and two films with Muehl and Brus in 1968,
unstable mental health drove him into isolation.
In June of 1969 he died from a plunge from his
apartment window in Vienna; the cause of his fall
was never determined.
Perhaps more than any other performance artists
of their time, The Wiener group incorporated
photography into the conceptual framework of
their practice. Photography accentuated the dialec-WIENER AKTIONISMUS