In 1988 Elke Krystufek joined the Academy of Fine Arts of Vienna, where she was strongly influenced by the work of Arnulf Rainer, one of the pioneers of Viennese Actionism. This artistic movement active between 1960 and 1970, and which included artists such as Hermann Nitsch and Otto Muehl, treated performance art as a political tool for the liberation of the body. In reaction to the psychological trauma caused by World War II, its members revived the expressionist tradition in much more violent and radical forms. Drawing on archaic collective pagan rituals and Nietzschean philosophy...
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