THE PRINTS OF HERMANN NITSCH - Nitsch Foundation

MICHAEL KARRER
THE PRINTS OF HERMANN NITSCH
A DOCUMENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH TIME
The present essay attempts to illuminate the prints of the universal artist Hermann Nitsch. In particular, we shall
consider the prints in their interplay with the synthesis of the arts (Gesamtkunstwerk) and in the process plot a
journey through time that furnishes a survey from the 1950s down to the present day. In the course of this
documental journey, we shall describe the key printed works, discuss the artist’s technical preferences and the
innovations achieved, as well as juxtapose the milestones in the medium of print with central biographical aspects.
This approach shall enable an insight into the reciprocal determination between situative details in the print oeuvre
and the total work of art, fully aware that the life and art of Hermann Nitsch are inseparably connected, and above
all inseparably connected with the o.m. theatre.
It seems eminently important to mention that all the disciplines of the synthesis of the arts – the idea of the o.m.
theatre, the composition, the scores, the drawings, the literary work, the pour paintings and the prints are to be
dated back to the late 1950s and early 1960s. Contrary to many opinions, the disciplines were all anchored in the
artist’s overall concept that was gestating at this time, and were not developed singularly complementing already
existing disciplines. This underscores the elementary genesis of this unique total philosophy and how all disciplines
are necessarily interwoven to serve the total vision.
Already in 1957, as the 19-year-old Hermann Nitsch gained his diploma from the Graphischer Lehr- und
Versuchsanstalt in Vienna after five years of training, he bore the idea of the o.m. theatre, a six-day festival that has
had a formative influence on him down to the present day. During his training Nitsch had the opportunity to learn
printmaking skills, for example in the area of lithography and etching. The work Proof of a Copy of the 100 Guilder
Print (Rembrandt) can be traced back to this year, a work that Hermann Nitsch then »poured« over with india ink in
1960. This motif was again taken up in 1987 while working on the print portfolio I »Die Architektur des Orgien
Mysterien Theaters« (Fred Jahn, Munich), printed 35-fold with each sheet reworked by the artist with india ink, ink,
stamping ink or Casein paint in the colours black, red, blue or purple.
During his five years of graphic arts training, and in particular in the immediately following years, a rapid
development took place in the various disciplines. In the field of drawing – from religious themes to doodle drawings
and informel – the first so-called architecture drawings were created around 1964, architectural drafts for action
performances. An architecture drawing was an essential component for the prints, for from the 1980s onwards it
was the starting point and motif for the majority of the edited graphic works. In the field of composition the first
scores were completed around 1958 and between 1960 and 1963 the first eight painting actions took place with
poured paintings. Photographic documentation shows the great importance Nitsch attached to the results, but even
more to the painting action itself. The artist began to perform and exhibit from 1960, and in 1962 he realized the
first action performance, 1st Action 19.12.1962, Crucifixion and Pouring of a Human Body, Apartment Otto Muehl.
With the rise of Viennese Actionism blood replaced red paint and in these first performances the artist’s own body
the painting surface.
Following the artist’s development from this early period of basic training, we can see that the prints receded into
the background in the 1960s and 1970s. These two decades were shaped by the years of Viennese Actionism, the
o.m. theatre, and painting actions – in other words performances. In the 1970s two drawings were completed which

years later would serve as the basis for two important prints: the Conquest of Jerusalem, drawn in 1971 and
published as a print in 2008, and the Last Supper, drawn in 1976-1979 and edited as a silk screen in 1983.
The drawing of the Last Supper, realized on a single continuous paper sheet, was translated into a silkscreen print by
Hermann Nitsch in 1983: »In the context of the o.m. theatre the composition matches the design of a subterranean
city based on the vision of the last super for the action play: ›the destruction and resurrection of our universe‹
(Hermann Nitsch). As a vision of the world to be taken as corporeal metaphoric, it reaches far beyond the
architectural design. Aware of the physical equations rendered in the work, through which the expansion of the
universe can be exemplary calculated, and with the reference to the Eucharist given in the title, with the Last Supper
the artist addresses the wish to experience a harmonizing analogy between man and cosmos.« 1 Following the
decades of the 1960s and 1970s, a quiet period for the artist’s printmaking activities, the silkscreen print of the Last
Supper preceded the most extensive and important portfolio in his work. The longstanding friend, gallery-owner and
publisher Fred Jahn from Munich brought together the printer Karl Imhof and the artist Hermann Nitsch for the
project Die Architektur des Orgien Mysterien Theaters. Between 1984 and 1991 Nitsch worked tirelessly on this
project, made up of four folders and in sum, according to my calculation, 3325 sheets plus artist’s exemplars as well
as several wonderful sample prints. The core of this undertaking at the beginning was to represent the »stories«
which were to be imagined sunk underneath one another in the earth. These stories were the rooms for the action
performances which are to be understood as a sweeping subterranean theatre. Or as Nitsch likes to put it: his
Bayreuth. Without using transfer paper, offset film or aluminium plates, Nitsch translated these stories onto the
medium of stone. These hand-drawn lithograph stones were combined repeatedly, placed over and against one
another, and in part combined with additional graphic techniques, for example etching. Everyone involved in the
project had committed themselves to achieving the optimal artistic elaboration without any limitations to be placed
on quality, quantity, or time.
In 1984 the first stones were created in Karl Imhof’s printer’s workshop, which Nitsch would then frequent for many
years to come for this project. After the motif of the stories formed the first folder, the second one was devoted to
the large-scale labyrinth architecture of a subterranean theatre. Two so-called folding maps in the format of 140.5 x
225.5 cm were created, drawn on cretonne. The sixteen sheets created in this folder are a combination prints from
lithographs, some of which are additionally imprinted by etchings. The third folder is the devoted to anatomy
drawings, mainly flayed head and body motifs which, however, are also to be seen as plans for subterranean theatre
spaces. The fourth folder contains three original prints in black-and-white from combined print cycles from
aluminium plates and lithograph stone, each in turn marked as a folding map and laminated on cretonne. The
algraphy offset is based on a drawing by Hermann Nitsch from 1979 and was transferred by Karl Imhof on a scale of
1:1.
Following the completion of the fourth folder in Munich in 1991, a new era in prints began in the very same year –
the collaboration with Kurt Zein. Commissioned by the Galerie Krinzinger, the first prints were created in Kurt Zein’s
studio in November 1991, a line etching on handmade paper splattered with pig’s blood. A fruitful collaboration that
continues today had begun. In 1993 a print for Professor Peter Baum was created and the first hesitant attempts
undertaken at applying actionist painting as the ground to handmade paper, a step that would shape the
collaboration in the following years. »Over the course of the years we [Hermann Nitsch and Kurt Zein] successively
extended the technical vocabulary. With attentive patience he learnt the original techniques of the printmaking,
vernis mou, alugraphy, aquatint, etc. and employed them with masterfully with seemingly unlimited fantasy. Every
sheet of the heavy handmade paper is painted in actionist manner. The colour plates were cleaned after every
imprint and rolled with other colours, whereby I tried to cater for the painted ground in terms of the colour, but
1 Jutta Schütt (ed.): Hermann Nitsch. Utopien auf Papier, exhibition catalogue, Städelsche Kunstinstitut from 1.7.-5.9.2004,
Frankfurt am Main 2004, p. 24.

sometimes also deliberately bring under control […] then as finale the etching was printed. Drying times of up to
several days were often kept in the printing process, so that the completion of an edition lasted several weeks.
When you hold a print by Nitsch in your hands, you have a work that is one of its kind, and know that it is the only
one of its kind worldwide.« 2 The printing technique developed by Hermann Nitsch and Kurt Zein, mostly labelled as
Unikatradierung/Unikatgrafik, was and is a significant basis for many print editions created over the last two
decades.
During the intensive collaboration between Hermann Nitsch and Kurt Zein another key work in the print oeuvre is
created that deserves to be emphasised and was already edited in the new millennium (2006-2007). Unlike the Last
Supper, the so-called the Entombment was not based on an original. The artist created this large-format work in Kurt
Zein’s Vienna studio in the form of an etching/drypoint on copper, vernis mou (soft-ground) on aluminium, and
lithography (alugraphy). In the process prints were created on action paintings with 12 to 18 plates. »Because I
cannot pull lithograph stones through my etching press and no lithograph stones of such a large size exist, I always
add to the lithograph technique the ugly but accurate term alugraphy in brackets […]. The procedure and
preparation of the printing plates is very similar if not the same to the work on the stone« 3
In 2008 the last hitherto large-format print was edited. The original drawing of the Conquest of Jerusalem from 1971
was translated into a silkscreen work. As in the Last Supper and the Entombment, the Conquest was printed
occasionally on original relics. While the title points back almost a thousand years and recalls the reported atrocities
committed during the First Crusade, the artist visualizes a stage for this dramatic action, typical for architectural
drawings, in the form of a subterranean city. An imaginary architectural plan for his theatre is created that draws on
the theme. More than a hundred numbered passageways and rooms, fields of exquisitely filigree symbols of the
cross, as well as organic forms feature on the large-format silkscreen.
In 2010 Hermann Nitsch was invited by the Israeli publisher Har-El to create a bilingual art book on the sacrificial
rites performed in the temple of Jerusalem as depicted from the third book of Moses »Leviticus«. This invitation led
to a largescale print project which ultimately comprised 16 bilingual artist’s books (Hebrew/German) in the unusual
format of 135 x 189 cm as well as 12 terragraph motifs printed on canvas. Terragraph is a silkscreen method that
generates a relieflike surface structure by mixing in sand. Hermann Nitsch has long been fascinated by the
»Leviticus«, ever since his youth, and artistically rendered the theme with the aid of this elaborate printing
technique in the workshop in Israel. The works created draw on his poured paintings and reflect the pastose effect
and pour characteristics of the distinctive originals. With Leviticus our journey through the print oeuvre of Hermann
Nitsch has come to an end. An attempt to document the various undertakings which by no means represents an
exhaustive coverage of all the printed and graphic works; rather, we have sought to offer a concentrated exploration
of the discipline pursued by the artist since his youth with great passion and resoluteness, and which is a firm
element of his total work of art.
_______________________________________________
Michael Karrer, The Prints of Hermann Nitsch. A Documental Journey through Time, in: Hermann Nitsch. Strukturen.
Architekturzeichnungen, Partituren und Realisationen des O.M. Theaters, ed. Carl Aigner, Leopold Museum – Private
Foundation, Wien 2011, S. 103-110.
2 Kurt Zein, in: Peter Bogner (ed.): Nitsch. Vorbilder, Zeitgenossen, Lehre, exhibition catalogue, Künstlerhaus Vienna, 25.6.-
11.10.2009, Vienna 2009, p. 164.
3 Kurt Zein, written interview with Michael Karrer, May 2011.