HERMANN NITSCH
CATHARTIC AVERSION
Paintings, Actions, Relics and Musical Scores 1962 - 2020
08 JUN. | 06:30 PM
Via Santa Croce 21, Milan
“DEVI MORIRE (dissing love), battle, responsorio, blind date”.
Performance musicale by and with Marino Formenti, Andrea Riccio
From Thursday 8 June ABC-ARTE ONE OF will celebrate the concluding act of the large-scale retrospective that the gallery is dedicating to the Master Hermann Nitsch: from Genoa to Milan, for the first time an Italian gallery is presenting a comprehensive exhibition on sixty years of artistic practice, thanks to the precious collaboration with the Museo Hermann Nitsch (Naples) and curated by Flaminio Gualdoni.
This exhibition of Hermann Nitsch is not a simple presentation of the inanimate remains of the actions that he triggered or accompanied, but takes on a further vitality of its own with a strong and specific degree of communicative autonomy. The exhibition hosted by ABC-ARTE ON OF in Milan is an attempt to give an account of Nitsch’s total world of experience through the use of dense material and spontaneous actions. Das Orgien Mysterien Theater that he founded in 1975 has been the guiding principle of his entire oeuvre.
Large canvases in the Milanese gallery in which the colour yellow and the painterly component are dominant induce a reflection on Existence. 79.malaktion, 2018, fills the space with light to focus attention on a single large-scale installation, Homage to Alberto Burri, 2015.
Once again the work of the great austrian Master takes place in a performative moment marked by the collective participation of his followers. Considered one of the most interesting musicians of his generation and praised by the Los Angeles Times as ‘a Glenn Gould for the 21st century’, Marino Formenti with Andrea Riccio has decided to pay tribute to the great Master, father of Viennese Action Painting Hermann Nitsch, with the provocatively entitled performance “DEVI MORIRE (dissing love), battle, responsorio, blind date”.
The exhibition will be open until 30 September 2023. The Hermann Nitsch presence in Milan will be ulteriorly honored with a special collaboration with the Università Bocconi: from 21 September 2023 a canvas 79.malaktion, 2018, will be shown in the Bocconi Art Gallery.
The bilingual monograph published by ABC-ARTE edizioni, with texts by the curator Flaminio Gualdoni and other scholars and a rich documentary apparatus, will be presented at the conclusion of the exhibition period.
The performance by Marino Formenti and Andrea Riccio will take place from 18:30 hrs on 8 June 2023 in Via Santa Croce 21, Milan (Piazza Sant’Eustorgio). It will animate the public space with the battle-cry DEVI MORIRE (Latin for “you must die”), battle of every dissing, the apparently ferocious motto of every antagonistic conflict.
To die is also to say not to appear, to disappear, not to express, not to express oneself, not to narrate oneself, no longer to exist.
Certainly, it is easier to tell oneself: it is a koan/paradox of blows on backs ready for punishment.
DEVI MORIRE can be the tenderest wish: to wish nothing.
You can die dancing, drinking, eating, you have to die with that lowlife.
(Anonymous, ‘La Passacaglia della Vita’, from Canzonette Spirituali e Morali, Milan, 1657)
Participation is free until full capacity.
Artists biographies
HERMANN NITSCH born in Vienna in 1938, he was trained in graphic advertising design and went on to work in the Technical Museum in the Austrian capital. The idea of Action Painting and Das Orgien Mysterien Theater [Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries], which became the thread running through the rest of his artistic development, came a few years later. He created the first Schüttbilder, produced by throwing paint and blood onto the canvas, a technique that was very popular with the Viennese Action Painters. Nitsch’s participation in various actions and exhibitions in Vienna led to three arrests and various court trials. Towards the mid-1960s he and other artists such as Günter Brus, Otto Mühl and Rudolf Schwarzkogler began to form the movement that would become known as Viennese Action Painting. They also took this artistic form to various cities in Northern Europe and the United States. His brushes with the law obliged him to move to Germany in 1968, and he only returned to Austria in 1971. He settled in the castle of Prinzendorf, south of Vienna, where from then on he was to hold all his actions, particularly the performance Das Orgien Mysterien Theater. Among his most important works are 6-Tage-Spiel [6-Day Play], directed by Alfred Gulden in the summer of 1988, and his 120.azione in the form of 2-Tage-Spiel in 2004. Nitsch took part as an artist in Documenta 5 (1972) and Documenta 7 (1982) in Kassel.
Selected public collections in Italy
CIAC Centro Italiano d’Arte Contemporanea, Foligno, Italy; Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy; Casa Serpone, Torrita Tiberina (Rome), Italy; MAMBO Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy; MART Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Trento, Italy; Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy; Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples, Italy
Selected international public collections
AGO Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Essl Collection of Contemporary Art, Klosterneuburg, Austria; Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck, Austria; Galerie Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany; Guggenheim Collection, New York, USA; Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany; Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland; Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany; Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; MOMA Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Mumok – Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, Austria; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; Museum, University of Yale, New Haven, USA; Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany; Nitsch Museum, Mistelbach, Austria; Rupertinum, Salzburg, Austria; Walker Kind Center, Minneapolis, USA; Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands.
MARINO FORMENTI pianist/performer/conductor hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “the Glenn Gould for the 21st century”. “Best of New York Times 2014” and “Best of the New Yorker 2015” for the performance LISZT INSPECTIONS. His works normally explore ‘music’ beyond the concert experience. In NOWHERE (New York, Berlin, Buenos Aires, etc.) he lives, eats and plays week after week without interruption, in the hope of ‘disappearing into the music’. ONE TO ONE, conceived for Art Basel and repeated on various continents, is an encounter with a visitor that so far has had a maximal duration of a whole day with an unknown visitor. The encounters have crystallised in the installation SELBER KÜNSTLER ("You will be an artist", 2014). In the film SCHUBERT UND ICH (Österreichischer Filmpreis 2014) he plays Franz Schubert’s Lieder with ordinary people; the film, that has won many awards, documents the intimate musical journey of the six protagonists. In TRIESTERSTRASSE 66 (Graz 2020) he spent an entire month in a simple home playing with everyone and conceiving a collective performance on a par with all. He is a regular guest at the Musikverein Vienna, Salzburg Festival, Luzern Festival, Aspen Festival and the Festival d'Automne Paris. "Artist in Residence" at the Lincoln Center New York, Wigmore Hall London and Teatro Colón Buenos Aires. As a soloist he has played several times with the New York Philharmonics, Los Angeles Philharmonics, Cleveland Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and with the conductors Gustavo Dudamel, Kent Nagano, Franz Welser-Möst and Daniel Harding. In the field of art he has presented work in the Palais de Tokio Paris, Art Basel, MUMOK Vienna, Gulbenkian Lisbon, and Kunsthaus Bregenz. He has conducted the Teatro alla Scala in collaboration with Maurizio Pollini in the Parco della Musica Rome, the Ravenna Festival and the Salle Pleyel Paris.
ANDREA RICCIO pianist/performer. Born in Naples in 2001, he is without a doubt one of the most interesting and promising young pianists in Italy. Praised by La Repubblica as a "genuine virtuoso of the pianoforte" and by the influential Konsequenz for his “extraordinary interpretative lucidity” and his “crisp and clean sound”, he is always looking for new horizons and new concert formats. His repertoire extends from classical to avantgarde and is often orientated towards the discovery and diffusion of new ideas and new aesthetics. In spite of his youthful years, he is already a regular guest at some of the major musical institutions, including the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and the Ravello Festival. His field of interest extends from music to the arts, as shown by his frequent collaborations with artistic institutions such as the Museo Nitsch and Casa Morra in Naples. With Konsequenz he has contributed to the important anthology Approdi, avanguardie musicali a Napoli [Moorings, musical vanguards in Naples], including his participation with numerous engravings that have met with considerable acclaim. He won the international competitions “Ischia International Piano Competition” in Naples, the “Premio Franz Liszt 2019”, and was a finalist in the “Steinway Piano Competition”. He graduated with distinction from the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory in Naples and obtained his degree from the very prestigious Mozarteum in Salzburg.
