Hermann Nitsch, born in Vienna in 1938, is a co-founder of Viennese Actionism, and one of the international pioneers of the Performance Art Movement. This Austrian universal artist’s world-famous painting actions have made a major contribution to the development of art post 1945.

More than 90 of these painting actions have been staged thus far, the most recent were held at the Bayreuth Festival in the summer of 2021 to accompany a new production of the opera The Valkyrie. Nitsch’s 20th painting action took place at the Vienna Secession in 1987 and is the only instance in which the artist’s action works have remained fully available. This is probably Nitsch’s most important integrated work of this kind. It symbolises his extraordinary artistic development and constitutes an unrepeatable contemporary document which exudes an international radiance.