Adolf Frohner biography

Adolf Frohner was an Austrian painter, engraver and sculptor among the founders together with Otto Muehl and Hermann Nitsch of the Viennese actionism. He was born in Großinzersdorf in 1924. In 1952 he moved to Vienna where he began to paint as a self-taught artist and followed courses at the Academy of Fine Arts as a guest student under the guidance of Herbert Boeckl.
In 1961 with With Boeckl's help, Adolf Frohner obtains a scholarship that allows him to study for a year in Paris. In the City of Light he met and frequented the Nouveaux Realistes while the following year together with colleagues Hermann Nitsch and Otto Muehl he put on a rather controversial performance Die Blutorgel which marked the birth of actionism Viennese. Following the dissolution of the artistic group, the painter began working in the studio of Daniel Spoerri.
In 1969 he participated in the São Paulo Biennial and the following year in the Venice Biennale. In this period he mainly created paintings on wood and engravings whose subjects are often represented by women who suffer violence. In 1972 he began an academic career at the same time at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Adolf Frohner dies in Vienna in 2017.