Herman Nitsch

Born 1938 in Vienna. Lives and works in Vienna.

Nitsch is active as a painter, composer, writer, and performance artist. He polished the idea that would be the theme of his whole life, the comprehensive art called the Theater of Orgies and Mysteries. He developed shocking performances that used animal carcasses and blood. Nitsch's performances use Freud's psychoanalytic theory on the foundation of the Dionysian festivals of Greece, the Christian passion plays, and other sources, and seek a group catharsis as they question modern civilization.