Wolf Vostell was a pioneering creator who explored the multiplicity of media and techniques such as painting, sculpture and installation. The creator of the dé-coll/age technique, a father of the happening in Europe and initiator of the Fluxus movement and video art, he started out in Czechoslovakia during World War II and later settled in Cologne. He began studying art at the Wuppertal School of Art and Design in the early ‘50s, a period when he produced his first happenings and dé-coll/age works. After studying in Paris, his interest in the paintings of Zurbarán led him to Cáceres in 1958, where he met his wife Mercedes Guardado, with whom he lived in Cologne until the 1970s, when they decided to move to Berlin, a city they remained in until the artist’s death. From the beginning Vostell’s work was marked by World War II and the Holocaust, which became recurring themes in his work, along with other key political events of the time he lived in, like the assassination of Kennedy or the fall of the Berlin wall.
I.A.
