The Dancer, 1984

Painting with oil on canvas

Dimensions: 180 x 150 x 4 cm

Otto Muehl was an Austrian action artist and a representative of Viennese Actionism.

From 1970, he became known for founding his commune, in which relationships of two and nuclear families were abolished. It had up to 600 members. In 1991 Otto Muehl was sentenced in Austria to seven years in prison for child abuse and violation of the Narcotics Act, which he served in full. Even in prison, Muehl was intensively engaged in works of visual art and painted about 300 pictures. After his release, he lived in Portugal.

In 1962, the first action-like event "Die Blutorgel" (The Blood Organ) took place in Muehl's basement studio, with the participation of Adolf Frohner and Hermann Nitsch. In 1966, together with Günter Brus, he developed a new type of action in which the body itself and its functions are understood as the actual material. The activities of this period are now treated as a separate form in art history under the term Viennese Actionism. The Vienna Museum of Applied Art has dedicated two major solo exhibitions to Muehl since 1998. In 2010, the Leopold Museum in Vienna showed Muehl's late work in an extensive show. On this occasion, Otto Muehl apologised for the first time to his victims for his sexual assaults in an open letter.