Otto Muehl
Otto Muehl is an Austrian artist, who is best known as one of the co-founders as well as a main participant of Viennese Actionism. In 1972 he founded the Friedrichshof Commune, which has been viewed by some as an authoritarian sect[1], and that existed for several years before falling apart in the 1990s. In 1991, Muehl was convicted of sexual crimes involving adolescents, and sentenced to 7 years imprisonment. He was released in 1997, after serving six and a half years, and set up a smaller commune in Portugal. After his release, he also published his memoirs from the prison (Aus dem Gefängnis). In 1943, Otto Muehl served in the Wehrmacht and in 1944 he was sent to the Front. After the war, he studied teaching German and History, and Pedagogy of Art at the Wiener Akademie der bildenden Künste. In the sixties his aim was 'to overcome easel painting by representing its destruction process'. He made rhizomatic structures with scrap iron ("Gerümpelplastiken"), but soon proceeded to the "Aktion" in the vein of the New York Happenings. In 1962, when he was 37, the first "Aktion" "Die Blutorgel" was performed in Muehl's atelier in the Perinetgasse by Muehl himself, Adolf Frohner and He…
Films