Wolf Vostell

Born in Leverkusen, Germany, 1932

Died, 1996

1954

• First trip to Paris, France. On the front page of the newspaper Le Figaro dated 6 September 1954, Vostell finds the word décollage (i.e. to take off, to remove, to separate, to scratch off, to kick the bucket) which is used in connection with the crash of a Superconstellation into the Shannon River. He transfers the term to torn posters and later on uses it for the open course of events. “Dé-coll/age” becomes Vostell‟s formal principle and comprehensive idea of art.

1955-56

• Studies painting, graphic arts and anatomy at the Ecole National Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. Vostell starts to use everyday objects he has found for his art, He works on torn poster wall with paints and fire. 

1958

• Realizes the Happening “Das Theater ist auf der Straβe” (“Theater is on the street”) (dé-coll/age actions with an anonymous audience on the streets of Paris), which was at the same time the first Happening ever realized in Europe.
• First object paintings into which parts of cars are integrated and televisions are installed behind torn canvases. Vostell thus becomes the first artist to introduce television as a medium in 20th century art.

1959

• Marriage to Mercedes Guardado Olivenza in Cáceres. She will remain his inseparable companion throughout his entire life.

1962

• Vostell founds the magazine “dé-coll/age – Bulletin aktueller Ideen” (“dé-coll/age – Bulletin of Current Ideas”); the first three issues appear.

1963

• The first Travel-Happening “9-Nein-dé-coll/ages” (“9-No-dé-coll/ages”) was performed for a selected audience at nine different places in the town of Wuppertal.
• By recording a distorted program including film actions, Vostell produces the first experimental film “Sun in Your Head”; a new form of dé-coll/aged electronic pictures. The first showing of the film is in Amsterdam, Netherlands 1964.

1964

• Invited by the Theatre of Ulm, Germany, Vostell performs the 6-Hour-Happening “In Ulm, um Ulm und um Ulm herum” (“In Ulm, round Ulm and around about Ulm”), a concert of three jet fighters at a military airport, a dinner in a slaughter-house, etc. at 24 places in Ulm.

1968

• With the composers Mauricio Kagel, Alfred Feussner, F. Heubach and others, Vostell founds “Labor e.V.”, a laboratory for research into acoustic and visual events. 

1969

• First concreting “Ruhender Verkehr” (“Stationary Traffic”) (a cemented-in Opel Kapitän) in co-operation with helmut Rywelski‟s gallery art intermedia in Cologne. Vostell calls his three-dimensional concretings Event Sculptures.

1970

• The Kölnischer Kunstverein – in co-operation with Vostell and Harald Szeemann – organizes the first retrospective show about the international movement of Happening and Fluxus.

1972

• Co-founder of the first German video-tape library at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (New Berlin Arts Association).

1973

• Co-founder of ADA – “Actions of the Avant-garde”. The first festival takes place in Berlin during the autumn. Its main organizer, the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, engages Vostell to present the Environment “Auto-Fieber” (“Car Fever”) and the Happening “Berlin-Fieber”.

1974

• In the barren landscape of the central Spanish Extremadura, near the village of Malpartida de Cáceres, Vostell founds the Museum for the Concept of Art in the 2^nd Half of the 20th Century in the building of an old woolen mill. It will be completed at the end of 1993.

1976

• First video Happening “Hinterm Baum” (“Behind the Tree”) in co-operation with Gallery G in Barcelona, Spain.

1977

• Participates in documenta 6, Kassel with the Environment “La Quinta del Sordo”.

1978

• Vostell meets Salvador Dalí, who commissions him to produce a sculpture for the Dalí Museum of Figueras, Spain: the “Fernseh-Obelisk” (“TV-Obelisk”). Vostell invites Dalí to realize his sculpture “Der Vorhang des Parzifal” (“The Curtain of Parzival”) based on an idea by the Catalan artist dating back to 1929.

1981

• Vostell realizes the mobile museum “Fluxus-Zug” (“Fluxus-Train”), organized by Mrs. Dagmar von Gottberg and under the patronage of Johannes Rau, the prime minister of North-Rhine-Westfalia: the train, which passes through 16 towns in North-Rhine-Westfalia, Germany, includes nine containers with seven Environments. Vostell accompanies the train, and the artist is engaged in educational work during its three-day stay in each place. 

1985

• Production of the video piece “TV Cubisme Liège” at Espace 251 Nord in Liège, Belgium. A complete Vostell video-retrospective from 1958-1085 is shown during the exhibition in Liège.

1987

• Realization of the first large sculpture “2 Beton-Cadillacs in Form der nackten Maja” (“Two Concrete Cadillacs in the Form of the Naked Maja”) on Rathenauplatz for the Sculpture Boulevard on the occasion of Berlin's 750th Anniversary Celebrations.

1989

• After the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Vostell creates the painting “9th November 89” and the cycle “The Fall of the Berlin Wall” (lead-concrete paintings).

1994

• Nationalization and re-opening of the Vostell Museum of Malpartida by the provincial government of Extremadura. 

1996

• Realization of his biggest multimedia sculpture, the dé-coll/age airplane sculpture “Warum dauerte der Prozeβ zwischen Pilatus and Jesus nur 2 Minuten?” (“Why did the trial between Pilate and Jesus take only 2 Minutes?”) for the 1st Festival di un Altro Mondo/Fluxus & Fluxus at Villa Scheibler in Milan.

From 1958 to 1998, Wolf Vostell exhibited at more than 200 one man shows in Europe, America and Asia, and participated in more than 750 group shows. From 1954 to 1988, Vostell staged 51 Happenings. During the years 1960 to 1962, Vostell gave five pre-Fluxus concerts, and between 1962 and 1994 he performed innumerable Fluxus concerts, of which 30 are documented.