The multi-talented artist Hermann Nitsch – an Actionist, painter, composer and stage designer – was not only a co-founder and one of the most significant figures of Viennese Actionism. With his original artistic concept of the Orgy Mystery Theatre, he also secured a prominent position within the illustrious circle of Austrian artists of international renown who, with their exemplary oeuvre, had a decisive influence on (European) art after 1945.

Nitsch interpreted the all-encompassing, ecstatic and excessive spectacle of the Orgy-Mystery Theatre as an ambitious and visionary attempt to make life, in all its existential breadth, perceptible through the senses, the body and the visual. “My work is a celebration of life and death, a reminder that we are all part of the eternal cycle of being.” In this multimedia Gesamtkunstwerk, which propagated a fusion of art and life, painting occupied a privileged position: it marked both the origin of the actions and their outcome. The focus was not on the immediate subjective result, but on the Dionysian-dynamic, sensually charged painting process per se, which Nitsch interpreted as condensed life and the epitome of passion.

The first ‘Schüttbilder’ (paintings created by pouring paint) emerged around 1960. Over the decades, both the textural quality (liquid versus relief-like and impasto) and the colour palette evolved. Until the late 1980s, Hermann Nitsch used only red in his paintings – for him the most intense of all colours, a symbol of blood and flesh, love, life and death. From around 1989, the liturgical colours green, blue and violet, as well as yellow and white, were also used. ‘… in the beginning there was red and blood, and black too. And later I used all the colours of the rainbow …’ Nitsch poured, splashed, brushed or applied the colours with relish using his bare hands, and worked them intuitively, digging into the paint with his fingers.

From 26 March to 5 July 2026, the reopened WAM – Vienna Museum of Actionism will present the exhibition ‘HERMANN NITSCH. 1960–1965’, showcasing exemplary works from the early career of this key figure in 20th-century art.