Action Painting (Bodentuch)（1984），Acrylic on burlap，190 × 290 cm，The Parkview Museum Collection

Vienneseartist, Hermann Nitsch’s paintings take inspiration from his performance praxis - Orgien Mysterien Theater, where suffering, ecstasy, the cathartic moment, and the transcendent state are primal forces of human nature being represented. Orgien Mysterien Theater and the notion of total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk) represent the conceptual and aesthetic basis of his entire artistic corpus. Since the beginning of the 1960s, his collective performances have incorporated elements of paganism, Greek mythology and religion. Notions of sacrifice and passion derived from the Greek god, Dionysus, and his element of the tragic suffering of being, are also being emphasised.

Action Painting (Bodentuch) celebrates the splashing and pouring of paint on the surface as a real event. The thick layers of red painting symbolises blood, the fluid of life, and its association with wound, pain, danger and death. Nitsch states, “Action painting is a key element of my theatre, it is the first stage of realising action on a surface, it is already a theatrical event...Red became the key: everything was geared towards the colour of ecstasy, of the passion, sacrifice, blood and flesh.”