Günter Brus (born 27 September 1938, Ardning, Styria, Austria) is an Austrian painter, performance artist, graphic artist, experimental filmmaker and writer. Brus grew up in Mureck, attended the Kunstgewerbeschule Graz and went to Vienna in 1956, where he studied painting and met his lifelong friend Alfons Schilling. Influenced by German expressionism, Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh, abstract expressionism and artists such as Emilio Vedova, he began in the fall of 1960 to create artwork that was not confined to visual media. His companion Otto Muehl, who met him at the time, said of his work: “The color sometimes exploded like a bomb when it hit the picture. That was total creative excess. [...] The entire room was covered with paint splatters, and the dried paint sludge lay inches high on the floor. ” Shortly before his first major exhibition together with Schilling, he was conscripted into the military in May 1961. After completing his military service, he fell into a psychological crisis and did not start work again until the end of 1962. In 1964, Brus performed his first performance, the working title Ana. From the beginning it was essential for him to put his own body at the center of the action, and in the three-part second action, hand painting and head painting. He was a co-founder in 1964 of Viennese Actionism ( with Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. His aggressively presented actionism intentionally disregarded conventions and taboos, with the intent of shocking the viewer. Sentenced to 6 months in prison after the Kunst und Revolution event at the University of Vienna in 1968, he fled to Berlin with his family and returned to Austria in 1976. Brus urinated into a glass then proceeded to cover his body in his own excrement, and ended the piece by drinking his own urine. During the performance Brus also sang the Austrian National Anthem while masturbating. Brus ended the piece by vomiting and was subsequently arrested. Through this piece and his other performance works, Brus hoped to reveal the still fascist essence of the nation. This performance created a public outrage at the time and was dubbed by the media "University Piggy." Brus also was editor of the Schastrommel (author's edition) from 1969 on. He was involved into the NO!Art movement. In 1966 he was with Gustav Metzger, Otto Muehl, Wolf Vostell, Yoko Ono and others a participant of the