Hermann Nitsch

During the 59th Venice Biennale, Helmut Essl’s private collection in collaboration with Zuecca Projects and Galerie Kandlhofer presents a major exhibition of artist Hermann Nitsch at Oficine 800 on the island of Giudecca, Venice.

Nitsch is a pioneering artist of Viennese Actionism. He is renowned for extreme action which combines rituals, sacrifice and catharsis.

The exhibition features the “20th painting action”, which was originally created and presented at the Wiener Secession, Vienna in 1987. The exhibition marks the first time that the entire 20th painting action works will be seen together in Italy since their creation and exhibition and is the artist’s only painting action to remain in one collection.

The viewer is absorbed in a pictorial, actionist environment: a space-filling panorama is created with the large-format poured painting on the front wall, the large splatter painting lying on the ground, and numerous smaller splatter and poured paintings flanking them. The exhibition illustrates like never before the essence of Nitsch’s painting as an integral component of his seminal work “Orgies Mysteries Theatre“.