Gustav Metzger

1926–2017

Biography

Gustav Metzger (10 April 1926, Nuremberg – 1 March 2017, London) was an artist and political activist who developed the concept of Auto-Destructive Art and the Art Strike. Together with John Sharkey, he initiated the Destruction in Art Symposium in 1966.

Metzger was recognised for his protests in the political and artistic realms.

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Artworks

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Gustav Metzger Liquid Crystal Environment

1965, remade 2005
Gustav Metzger Recreation of First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art

1960, remade 2004, 2015
Gustav Metzger Painting on Cardboard

c.1961–2
Gustav Metzger Table

c.1957–8
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Gustav Metzger Projects Realised 1 (Monument to Bloody Sunday)

1972, 1998
Gustav Metzger Projects Unrealised 1

1971, 1998
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Gustav Metzger To Walk Into - Massacre on the Mount, Jerusalem, 8 October 1990

1996
Gustav Metzger Homage to the Starving Poet

1951

See all 12

Film and audio

TateShots

Gustav Metzger on Life and Art

'All I can say is this totality of life, whatever that might mean, this attempt to grasp what is important ...
TateShots

Gustav Metzger: Festival of missed fits

The Germna artist's career has spanned sixty years of art and political activism
Listen

Talking Art: Gustav Metzger

After a career spanning decades, Gustav Metzger is now in greater demand than ever, generating new projects as for Münster ...
Watch

Gustav Metzger: Talking Art

For Talking Art, Gustav Metzger is interviewed by Andrew Wilson, Curator of Modern and Contemporary British Art at Tate.
Watch

Gustav Metzger: Artist’s Talk

In the face of information overload - for example on the internet - and a range of difficult dilemmas, Metzger questions whether ...

Features

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Art Term

Auto-destructive art

Auto-destructive art is a term invented by the artist Gustav Metzger in the early 1960s to describe radical artworks made ...
Read

When art meets technology …

To coincide with IK Prize 2016 winner Recognition, we take a look at a few artists who have used machines ...
Tate Etc

The seeds of destruction

Jonathan Griffin

Art Under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm at Tate Britain
Tate Papers

Waste to Monument: John Latham’s Niddrie Woman: Art & Environment

Craig Richardson

John Latham’s Artist Placement Group residency at the Scottish Office’s Development Agency in 1975–6 led to a ...
Tate Etc

You saw it here first

Carmen JuliÃ¡

Gallery One, New Vision Centre, Signals and Indica at Tate Britain
Tate Etc

New journeys in a teeming universe: Tate Triennial

Andrew Hunt

On the eve of Tate Britain’s Triennial, Andrew Hunt explores the themes proposed by its curator, Nicholas Bourriaud.