While Brus, Nitsch and Schwarzkogler all attended graphic design schools, Muehl, who was more than ten years older than the other artists, studied art education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna after completing a teaching degree in history and German.

His artistic beginnings consisted of figurative, partly expressive, partly cubist painting. The material, which he understood in a superordinate sense as the material as well as the existent in general, also understood the human body as such, was to become the central element and medium of expression in his further work.

The decisive experience for Muehl at the end of 1960 was becoming acquainted with the informal painting of the much younger Brus, which was strongly determined by the body’s motor skills and characterised by an excessive use of colour, which fascinated him greatly and led to a new approach in his own artistic work.

With this very early work, which Muehl entitled ‘Crisis’, we present a work that strongly references Günter Brus’ informal cycle and yet bears Muehl’s individual signature.