Five unpublished picturepoem texts from the great Vienna actionist.

Günter Brus, born in 1938 in Ardning, Austria, was prominent among the Vienna Actionists in the mid-sixties. His solo actions were characterised by an intensity and physical involvement which transcended mere provocation: not only did they question the validity of artistic expression in the face of the bodily nature of societal repression, they also took him beyond the barriers of taboo and revolution to an auto-investigation of the metaphysical structure of the body.

Brus withdrew from direct Actionism in 1970 at the point where it was of no further import to his own development, devoting himself to drawing, writing and his own unique synthesis, the Bild-Dichtung (Picture-Poem). But far from being a step backwards, his present production can be seen as a development of the Actions: having gained the ability to sink into a trance at will, his work charts a revealed realm of myth and reality, philosophy and dream, word and picture. This selection of his pen and ink Picturepoems offers a glimpse into a vast oeuvre executed in a variety of media.