About the Work
The picture bursts beyond the viewer's field of vision, confronting him with its violent wall of paint poured, smeared and sprayed across the canvas. The work was produced during the 28th painting performance at Prinzendorf Palace, near Vienna, where the Austrian action artist has performed his 'Orgies Mysteries Theatre' regularly since the 1970s. Hermann Nitsch is one of the most important representatives of Viennese Actionism, which made the human body the subject of art in a completely new way. Nitsch became an important but controversial person on the international art scene through these staged performances involving the slaughter of animals and representations of crucifixions. The gestural traces of flowing paint on the canvas convey the impression of an excessive, orgiastic painting process and structure the picture.
