Haunted by the mass destruction and industrialised killing for which World War II was the stage, but also by Cold War tensions and the onset of nuclear armament, Gustav Metzger wrote a first manifesto in 1959 in favor of “auto-destructive” art. It is a call to reflect on and radically experiment with the planned obsolescence of materials and the processes of decay that ultimately lead to their disappearance, contextualized by the artist within Western society’s morbid fascination for destruction and, from 1960 onward, the man-made devastation of nature.
In 1957, against the backdrop of the first major civil nuclear accident in the West at the Windscale plant in England, and amidst mounting controversy surrounding the British H-bomb testing between 1956 and 1958, Gustav Metzger makes his founding contribution to the King’s Lynn Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament committee. In 1960, he also participates in…
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