Günter Brus is an Austrian painter, performance artist, graphic artist, experimental filmmaker and writer.
Brus grew up in Mureck, attended the Kunstgewerbeschule Graz and went to Vienna in 1956, where he studied painting and met his lifelong friend Alfons Schilling.
Influenced by German expressionism, Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh, abstract expressionism and artists such as Emilio Vedova, he began in the fall of 1960 to create artwork that was not confined to visual media.
His companion Otto Muehl, who met him at the time, said of his work: “The color sometimes exploded like a bomb when it hit the picture. That was total creative excess. [...] The entire room was covered with paint splatters, and the dried paint sludge lay inches high on the floor. ”
Shortly before his first major exhibition together with Schilling, he was conscripted into the military in May 1961. After completing his military service, he fell into a psychological crisis and did not start work again until the end of 1962. In 1964, Brus performed his first performance, the working title Ana.