Wolf Vostell

Wolf Vostell - Studies in Wuppertal and Paris; development of décollage

Wolf Vostell was born Wolf Schäfer in Leverkusen on 14th October 1932. He spent the war years with his parents and younger sister in the Sudetenland, and the family returned to Leverkusen in 1945. Wolf Vostell's talent for drawing already stood him in good stead during his school years, and in 1950 he began an apprenticeship as a photolithographer. Two years later, he changed his birth name Schäfer to his mother's maiden name of Vostell. In 1954 he began studying at the Werkkunstschule Wuppertal, and during a stay in Paris developed his principle of décollage, inspired by a newspaper headline about a failed aeroplane take-off. The French word décollage can mean both the take-off of an aeroplane and the scratching off of stickers. By tearing down public posters, old layers are brought to light again, present and past are mixed, topicality is questioned. During this time, Wolf Vostell also met the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. 

Founder of the FLUXUS movement and initiator of the Happenings

In 1958, Wolf Vostell continued his studies in Düsseldorf and met the young teacher Mercedes Guardado Olivenza during a trip to Spain, whom he married two years later and regarded as his muse and soul mate for the rest of his life. In 1962, Wolf Vostell founded the famous FLUXUS group together with other artists. The declared aim of all those involved was to consistently overcome existing boundaries and ideas and they thus deliberately and repeatedly used provocation to upset the public. With his action Neun-Nein-dé-coll/agen, Vostell became one of the initiators of the Happening. His most elaborate project of this kind was the six-hour event In Ulm, um Ulm und Ulm herum. The action included a concert with three jet aeroplanes, which were intended to commemorate topical political events such as the Vietnam War. With his spectacular Happenings, Vostell also succeeded in crossing the big pond: in 1966, he was able to include the entire underground network of the city of New York in his project Dogs and Chinese not allowed.

Criticism of war, demarcation and consumer society

In 1971, Wolf Vostell moved to divided Berlin. For the artist, his new place of residence symbolised brutality and the violence of war, and the Holocaust and the Berlin Wall now became a central motif in his work. Vostell was critical of the subsequent reunification, as he generally cultivated a critical view of the modern world. However, he did not shy at all away from being one of the first artists to integrate technical achievements such as televisions into his performances: In the absence of video technology, he had a television broadcast filmed live and distorted the resulting images. He often worked with concrete, which became his trademark, sometimes encasing entire cars in concrete until the bodywork resembled a coffin. Vostell regarded the prevailing enthusiasm for cars in Germany as irrational and wanted to express this.

Wolf Vostell died in Berlin on 3rd April 1998.