Gustav Metzger died

On March 1, in London, at the age of 90, the artist Gustav Metzger, the creator of the direction “Self -destroying art”, died.

It is reported by The Guardian .

Gustav Metsger was born in 1926 in Nuremberg in a Jewish family, in 1939 during the operation “Kindertransport” and his brother was transported to the UK. His parents and almost all the other relatives remaining in continental Europe became victims of the Holocaust.

He received an art education in Cambridge, London and Oxford, as well as at the Royal Academy of Extreme Arts in Antwerp. By the end of the 1950s, he turned into a convinced anti-capitalist and an anti-Congryman, participated in the movement for nuclear disarmament and the anti-war group “Committee of the hundred”.

In the 1959 manifesto, Metsger defined self-destructive art as “a desperate subversive political weapon, the last means ... in the fight against the capitalist system ... in the fight against art dealers and collectors who manipulate contemporary art to their benefits.”

In the same year, the first personal exhibition of Metzger’s paintings took place in London, but he soon moved away from painting and began to implement the concept of “public art for an industrial society”. In his installations and performances, the artist often used construction garbage, production waste and other non -traditional objects and materials.

At one of the first public demonstrations of self -destructive art in the summer of 1961, on the shores of Thames, Metzger hung a white, black and red panels on the metal frame, and then, wearing a gas mask, sprayed acid on them, and they decayed in front of the audience.

In 1966, Metsger organized an international symposium in self -destructive art in London, which united Viennese corporators, artists from the Fluxus movement, poets, musicians and psychologists. Among the participants in the symposium were John Lennon and Yoko.

One of the ideas of Metzger, who heated liquid crystals on glass plates and projected the image on large screens with photoslides, became a symbol of the psychedelic rock of the 1960s, it was used in their stage shows Pete Townsend from The Who , musicians of the Cream group and many others. Now the work of Metzger in this technique, Liquid Crystal Environment , can be seen in the Tate Gallery.

In recent years, the artist worked on the series “Historical Photos” dedicated to tragic events and catastrophes of the 20th century.