Vienna builds first museum that shocks ‘activism’ art movement

The private museum in the center of Vienna is the initiative of several collectors.

Vienna, Austria:

Vienna’s first museum dedicated to the shocking “activist” art movement opens on Friday, aiming to highlight the work of four major artists who have long been scorned and even persecuted for their radical behavior.

Vienna’s “activists” – Gunter Bruce, Otto Muir, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler – pushed the limits in their performances in the 1960s, Not shying away from the use of blood, urine and feces, he challenges the boundaries of traditional painting.

Art historian Eva Badura-Triska said: “Few can rival the radicalism of the Viennese Actionists.”

She selected nearly 100 works for the opening of the Vienna Action Museum (WAM).

“They were very, very intense with the human body and the human psyche, and there were no taboos,” she told AFP.

The works, which are primarily photographs of the four artists performing, along with some of their paintings and drawings, are just a small part of WAM’s collection of 17,000 exhibits.

The private museum in the center of Vienna is the initiative of several collectors. Planning for the project began two years ago with an annual budget of 700,000 euros ($770,000).

“We want to ensure that Vienna Actionism – or the artistic quality of Vienna Actionism – reaches a wider audience,” WAM director Julia Moebus-Puck told AFP.

Moebus-Puck adds that in the 1960s and 1970s, all four artists growing up after World War II were “outlaws, outcasts, sometimes arrested.”

“Things changed a lot in the 1980s and especially in the 1990s, when they were given a big stage,” first through international exhibitions and then also in Austria, she added.

Bruce, the last surviving key member of the group, died last month at the age of 85 in the southern Austrian city of Graz.

A museum has been opened in his name in Graz. Nicci also has several museums dedicated to his work, including one in Italy.

In addition to his artwork, Moore also made headlines for founding a sect-like commune in 1972 that descended into chaos in 1991.

Mir was sentenced to seven years in prison for sex with a minor, rape and drug charges. He died in 2013 at the age of 87.

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