(b Vienna, Aug 29, 1938). Austrian performance artist, painter, writer and composer. He attended the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna from 1953 until 1958, after which he worked in the Technisches Museum in Vienna as a graphic designer. Most of his work of the 1950s was conceived as a form of written preparation for the projected staging of a large-scale Gesamtkunstwerk, the form of which, as a six-day festival, was first thought up in 1957 and entitled the Orgies–Mysteries Theatre. In 1960, following his return to painting influenced in particular by Arnulf Rainer, he held his first performances at the Technisches Museum, which were based around the art of painting, but which gradually came to incorporate such props as animal carcasses. In this year he also met Otto Muehl, Günter Brus and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. By 1962 he had moved from the painting performance to the performance or Aktion itself, when, tied to the wall of Muehl’s flat in Vienna as if crucified, blood was poured over him. This established the crucifixion as one of the major themes of the ...