Career
Metzger is known as a leading exponent of the Auto-Destructive Art and the Art Strike movements.
He was also active in the Committee of 100 and took part in their early anti-nuclear base campaigns of direct action and occupation.
In 1959, he published the first auto-destructive manifesto Auto-Destructive Art. This was given as a lecture to the Architecture Association in 1964, which was taken over by students as an artistic 'Happening'.
In 1962, he participated in the Festival of Misfits organised by members of the Fluxus group, at Gallery One, London. His proposal to exhibit the front pages of the Daily Mirror covering the Cuban Missile Crisis was rejected by the organisers Robert Filliou and Daniel Spoerri.
In 2005, he selected EASTinternational which he proclaimed to be "The art exhibition without the art.".
Throughout the 60 years that Metzger has been producing politically engaged works, he has incorporated materials ranging from trash to old newspapers, liquid crystals to industrial materials, and even acid. "
From September 29, 2009 through November 8, 2009, the Serpentine Gallery in London features the most extensive exhibition ever in the U.K. of Gustav Metzger’s work. The exhibit includes the installation Flailing Trees, which consists of 15 upturned willow trees embedded in a block of concrete, symbolizing a world turned upside down by global warming. He feels that artists face a threat that global warming will lead to the extinction of things in nature, which they rely on because nature is such a big inspiration to artists. Metzger stated that “artists have a special part to play in opposing extinction, if only on a theoretical, intellectual basis.” "
Metzger has continued to make challenging art works around the world. He currently lives and works in East London.
Read more about this topic: Gustav Metzger
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