Günter Brus (1938–2024)

'Günter Brus earned his reputation through his role in what has come to be known as the 'Wiener Aktionismus'. Brus and others (primarily Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkögler) developed an extreme strain of performance art. Brus was the first artist to use bodily fluids in works like 'Zerreissprobe' and 'Körperanalysen'. His performance of the latter - during which he lacerated himself, smeared himself with his own shit, and masturbated as he sang the Austrian national anthem - at the University of Vienna's 1968 event Kunst und Revolution resulted in a psychiatric evaluation and criminal charges, on which he was sentenced to six months' strict confinement. 'So at the beginning of 1969, Brus left the country illegally with his family to settle in Berlin. There he met with Gerhard Rühm and Oswald Wiener on May 27, 1969, to establish the "Austrian Government in Exile" and its official mouthpiece, the magazine Die Schastrommel.'… (meer)