Preview of Legendary Viennese Actionist Hermann Nitsch's First Exhibition @ Marc Straus Gallery in New York

Last month, we featured an incredibly fascinating interview with legendary Viennese Actionist Hermann Nisch.  Tonight, the artist will be having his first exhibition at the Marc Straus gallery in New York. The exhibition will include recent paintings as well as important historic pieces from his distinguished career of over 55 years. Since 1957, Nitsch has been addressing the intensification of human existence through his ritualistic performance art, most prominently “The Orgien Mysterien Theater.” With more than 100 performances to date, these staged Dionysian performances are replete with religious sacrifices, mock crucifixion, blood, entrails, robes, dance and nude participants. Religious tropes are all here; the intensity resembles scenes from Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece, the carcasses nod towards Rembrandt’s hanging meats. The exhibition opens tonight and runs until October 8 at Marc Straus Gallery, 299 Grand Street New York, NY. photographs by Tenlie Mourning

Read Our Conversation With the Last of the Great Actionists, Hermann Nitsch →

Photograph by Luci Lux

Herman Nitsch is considered the last of the great ‘Actionists.’ Together with fellow Austrian artists Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, he developed what would become one of the most violent and “depraved” artistic movements of the 20th century. In reaction to a complacent post-war society, Nitsch aimed for realism…shocking, brutal realism, which he insists is only a mirror to man’s own innate brutality and thirst for violence and defilement. His performances, which are held under the title of The Orgies Mysteries Theater, were so shocking and real, that he has been arrested multiple times and even exiled from his own country. His action performances, or “aktionens,” vary in length – sometimes they last several days – but they always convey a sense of pagan ritual, replete with human and animal sacrifices, copulation, blood drinking and bloodletting, disembowelment, intestines spilling from carcasses, dance, music, and audience participation. In one filmed performance, held in Germany in 1970, you can find Nitsch disemboweling a goat, removing the intestines, forcing participants to drink the blood, placing a female participant on a crucifix and then inserting his penis into her vagina through the entrails. Autre was fortunate enough to have a chat with Hermann Nitsch from his studio in Vienna – our conversation ranged from development of The Orgy Mystery Theater, how the artist embraces his work in the face of possible jail time, the success of his current show in Palermo and what he likes to do for fun. Click here to read the full conversation.