About the person
born in 1938 in Vienna, Austria
died in 2022 in Mistelbach, Austria
After graduating from the Graphic Arts Teaching and Research Institute in Vienna, Hermann Nitsch took a job as a commercial artist at the Technical Museum in 1957. A few years later, he created his first painting actions and developed the idea for the Orgy Mystery Theater, which became his lifelong passion and the focus of all his endeavors. Nitsch's public actions in Vienna in the early 1960s led to constant confrontations with the authorities and several weeks in prison, prompting the artist to move to Germany in 1968.
The canvas is no longer understood merely as a surface for painting, but as a space to be activated. Instead of paints, “real” substances such as food, excrement, blood, and animal carcasses are used to force immediate, often shocking physical experiences. The boundaries of norms and themes of identity are renegotiated, often with the radical use of one's own body as a place of freedom. The Vienna Actionism movement, which also included artists Günter Brus, Otto Muehl, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler, saw itself as a “liberating blow” against Austrian post-war society, which was perceived as rigid and outdated.
Following the great success of the Orgien-Mysterien-Theater (Orgy Mystery Theater) in the United States and Germany in the late 1960s, Nitsch staged performances in many European and North American cities during the 1970s. In 1971, he succeeded in purchasing the Lower Austrian castle of Prinzendorf from the church, where Nitsch also realized his ideas for music for his theater in the course of larger-scale actions. Noise orchestras, screaming choirs, and electronically amplified instruments were used in the actions. Nitsch interprets life as passion, the painting process as condensed life, and thus as the epitome of passion.
The artist himself remains present through the painting shirts he wears during his work, which are inserted in a central position in the picture, encouraging the viewer to identify with the painting process and enter the picture with him. After guest professorships at the Frankfurt University of Fine Arts and the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts, Nitsch has been teaching a class in interdisciplinary art in Frankfurt am Main since 1989. In 2005, Nitsch was awarded the Golden Medal of Honor of the City of Vienna.
About the artwork
Instead of wielding a brush, Nitsch poured large quantities of paint directly from containers onto the canvas or jute for his “Schüttbilder” (pour-over paintings). The focus was on the uncontrolled, spontaneous flow of the paint, which created a raw, expressive texture. The artist often used blood to make the duality of life, death, physicality, and spirituality tangible, as he does here. The use of blood as a material, as well as the explicit reference to the Stations of the Cross in the title, reveals Nitsch’s deep connection to the Christian Passion narrative. However, he removed suffering from its purely religious context to portray it as a universal, primal human experience of sacrifice, death, and the longing for redemption. The motif serves as a formal link between his painting and the Orgien Mysterien Theater that emerged from it.