Günter Brus: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon

This book is a retrospective of the most personally meaningful and significant works of Austrian artist Günter Brus. In the late 1950s, at the very start of his career, Günter Brus developed a style very close to that of Abstract Expressionism. By 1964 he had become involved with the Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries (alongside Hermann Nitsch and Otto Mühl) and began to stage one-man performances centering on ritual and social catharsis. In these performances, conserved in the form of sketches, photographs and film, the artist used his body as material and medium to denounce the social, political and religious taboos of Western society. During the 1970s Brus' work became more sinister, embodied in the dark, neurotic drawings of that stage of his career. These drawings, first in black and white and later in color, explored illustration, symbolism, and the aesthetics of cruelty, while maintaining their focus on the human body as a primary protagonist. For the past three decades, Brus has concentrated on the creation of 'poem-pictures', literature and theatrical stage design. This publication presents the most personal and significant examples of the artist's work.