33 Facts About Wolf Vostell

Wolf Vostell was a German painter and sculptor, considered one of the early adopters of video art and installation art and pioneer of Happenings and Fluxus.

Wolf Vostell was married to the Spanish writer Mercedes Vostell and has two sons, David Vostell and Rafael Vostell.

Wolf Vostell was born in Leverkusen, Germany, and put his artistic ideas into practice from 1950 onwards.

Wolf Vostell's first Happening, The Theater is in the Street, took place in Paris in 1958, and incorporated auto parts and a TV.

Wolf Vostell was the first artist to integrate a television set into a work of art.

Wolf Vostell's automobile-concrete-sculptures made from cars and concrete are to be found in Cologne Ruhender Verkehr from 1969, Concrete Traffic from 1970 in Chicago, VOAEX from 1976 in the Museo Vostell Malpartida in Malpartida de Caceres, Spain and Zwei Beton-Cadillacs in Form der nackten Maja from 1987 in Berlin.

Wolf Vostell gained recognition for his drawings and objects, such as images of American B-52 bombers, published under the rubric "capitalist realism" and as a result of his inclusion of television sets with his paintings.

Wolf Vostell's grave is at the Cementerio Civil de la Almudena in Madrid.

From 1950 on, Wolf Vostell implemented his first artistic ideas, in 1953 he began an apprenticeship as a lithographer and attended the Werkkunstschule at the Bergische Universitat with Ernst Oberhoff in Wuppertal.

Wolf Vostell's happening Cityrama of 1961 in Cologne was the first happening in Germany.

Wolf Vostell's work is documented photographically and is part of the archive, which has been housed in the "Museo Vostell Malpartida" since 2006.

Wolf Vostell is regarded as the first artist who integrated a television set into a work of art.

Since the 1950s Wolf Vostell has thematized the Holocaust in numerous works.

Wolf Vostell did not want to express with his outward appearance that he was Jewish by his appearance he rather carried his values to the outside world and thus directed himself unambiguously against the danger of suppressing or even forgetting the extermination of European Jews by the German National Socialists.

In 1962 Wolf Vostell participated in the Fluxus manifestation Fluxus: International Festival of Contemporary Music in Wiesbaden and in 1963 in the Fluxus festival Festum Fluxorum Fluxus in Dusseldorf.

In 1964 Wolf Vostell initiated the Happening In Ulm, around Ulm and around Ulm - in the same year he had his first exhibition participation in the 13th exhibition of the Deutscher Kunstlerbund in Berlin.

In 1969 - in cooperation with the gallery art intermedia of Helmut Rywelski in Cologne - Wolf Vostell created his first car-concrete sculpture Ruhender Verkehr.

In January 1970, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago sponsored a happening in which Wolf Vostell encased a 1957 Cadillac in concrete at a parking lot near the museum, creating the work Concrete Traffic.

Wolf Vostell carried out a work of Dali, which Dali had already conceived in the 1920s.

In return, Wolf Vostell installed 1988 the sculpture TV-Obelisk in the Teatre-Museu in Figueres with 14 TV sets and Dali completed the sculpture with a woman's head on the top, which he created.

Wolf Vostell dealt with world political events in his artistic work from the 1950s on.

Wolf Vostell documented and processed the fall of the Berlin Wall in more than 50 works.

Pictures, assemblages, installations and sculptures by Wolf Vostell are often designed with TV sets.

From 1976 Wolf Vostell travelled regularly between Berlin and Malpartida de Caceres.

Wolf Vostell made assemblages in which he combined painted bull heads with light bulbs, car parts or other objects.

Wolf Vostell processed the concrete liquid as a color for his paintings and drawings.

Wolf Vostell painted with liquid concrete, acrylic paint and charcoal.

Wolf Vostell poured liquid lead over his canvases, combining acrylic paint, liquid lead and liquid concrete.

Wolf Vostell worked with gold leaf, which he applied directly to the canvas.

For Wolf Vostell, it was important that these concrete car sculptures be placed an urban setting among other, operational cars.

In 1989 the Art'otel Berlin Kudamm opened, which Wolf Vostell has as its theme and thus became a permanent exhibition.

Wolf Vostell's works were exhibited at six venues: the Cologne City Museum, the Kunsthalle Koln, the Rheinische Landesmuseum Bonn, the Kunsthalle Mannheim, the Schloss Morsbroich in Leverkusen and the Kunstmuseum Mulheim an der Ruhr.

Since 1989, the 1969 car-concrete sculpture Resting Traffic, for which Wolf Vostell cast an Opel Kapitan in concrete, has stood on the central reservation of the Hohenzollernring in Cologne.