Günter Brus


Günter Brus is an Austrian painter, performance artist, graphic artist, experimental filmmaker and writer.
Brus was a co-founder in 1964 of Viennese Actionism from 1969 on. He was involved into the NO!Art movement.
In 1966 he was with Gustav Metzger, Otto Muehl, Wolf Vostell, Yoko Ono and others a participant of the Destruction in Art Symposium in London.
Brus was awarded the Grand Austrian State Prize in 1997. Most of his works are shocking and controversial. The Joanneum now houses a permanent gallery, called the Bruseum, featuring the work of Brus and fellow Viennese Actionists.
In 2010, Berlin-based art film home video company Edition Kröthenhayn released a boxset including a DVD containing his films, directed by, among others, Kurt Kren, Hans Christof Stenzel, Peter Gorsen, Ernst Schmidt Jr., Helmut Kronberger, Werner Schulz, Otto Muehl, as well as by Brus himself and his wife Anni Brus, compiled and presented in a documentary format by Peter Kasperak, with a total running length of 82 minutes in a limited edition of a thousand hand-numbered copies under the title Körperanalysen: Aktionen 1964–1970. The DVD further features a 2004 52-minutes television documentary film about Brus called Schrecklich verletzlich – Günter Brus directed by Peter Kasperak, Anita Natmessnig, and Adam Wallisch as well as many slide shows of Actionism photography by such luminaries as Ludwig Hoffenreich. The boxset also sports a 100-pages book with photos and texts by Peter Weibel and Theo Altenberg.

Selected Exhibitions

2018: Unruhe nach dem Sturm - Günter Brus, Belvedere 21, Vienna, Austria
2011: Staging Action: Performance in Photography since 1960, MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
2010: Ruptures and Continuities: Photography Made after 1960 from the MFAH Collection, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA
2006: Primal Secretions: A Günter Brus Retrospective, Slought Foundation, Philadelphia, USA
2006: Into Me/Out of Me, P.S.1. MoMa, New York, USA
2005: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon, MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani, Barcelona, Spain
2005: Viaggio intorno all’opera - Una retrospettiva dal 1960 al 1996, Galleria d'Arte Moderna I GAM, Bologna, Italy
2004: Behind the Facts. Interfunktionen 1968 – 1975, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain
1996: Out of Action, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA
1993: Retrospektive „Sichtgrenze – Limité du visible“, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
1986: Retrospektive „Der Überblick", Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts, Vienna, Lenbachhaus Munich, Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Germany