Wolf Vostell
Biography
Wolf Vostell (14 October 1932 Leverkusen – 3 April 1998 Berlin) was a German painter and sculptor of the second half of the 20th century. Wolf Vostell is considered one of the early adopters of Video art, Environment, Installation, Happening and the Fluxus Movement. Techniques such as blurring and the Dé-collage are characteristic of his work, as is embedding objects in concrete.
Known For & Full Filmography5 Titles
Movie - 2015, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The German artist Wolf Vostell and his family moved to a little village in Cáceres (Extremadura/Spain) in the seventies. In the middle of this primitive environment, he founded a contemporary art museum in connection with the local inhabitants, thus turning Malpartida into the first Fluxus village.
Movie - 1989, 2h 15m • as Self
A comprehensive documentation of new art movements from 1945 to the present day. Beginning with the "Internationale Situationniste," "Cobra," "Spur," and "Wiener Gruppe" groups in Europe, and moving on to the international Happening and Fluxus movements, including the Viennese Actionists, and from 1970 onward to international Body and Performance Art, which also encompassed media art—film and video—the documentary presents film and photographic material from these art movements.
Movie - 1979, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A sartorially resplendent woman of few words arrives in Berlin with plans to live out the rest of her days as a drunkard.
Movie - 1981, 2h 15m • as Himself
An essayistic documentary about the action art movement that emerged in the 1960s: In interviews with various action artists, including Wolf Vostell, Joseph Beuys and Allan Kaprow, director Helmut Herbst illuminates the performative and participatory tendencies in art that began in the 1960s and outlines the diversity of motives and strategies.
Movie - 1973, 2h 15m • as self
In 1973, Wolf Vostell, an artist associated with Fluxus, made a happening in which participants were required to perform a series of ritual, obsessive actions, such as “go to the trunk of your vehicle, there open and close the trunk 750 times and 375 times put a white plate in it and take it out 375 times.” Described by Ottinger as a documentation of what Vostell called “dé-coll/age-happening”, the film is an illustration of her creative method, a surrealist act, a separate work of art, and a strange object. She would later describe her method as “fragments of reality assembled in an unusual manner”.