Gustav Metzger at Hauser & Wirth Somerset
Gustav Metzger - Supportive - 1965-66
From June 26th to September 12th, 2021, Hauser & Wirth Somerset presents an exhibition of works by Gustav Metzger (1926-2017), the artist who developed the concepts of Auto-Destructive Art and Art Strike.
Source: Hauser & Wirth Somerset. Image: Gustav Metzger: "Supportive", 1965-1966 / 2011. 7 Kodak SAV 2050 slide projectors with control units, rotating polarised filters, liquid crystals. Collection du Musée d’art contemporain, Lyon. Photo courtesy MAC Lyon. Photo: Blaise Adilon. © The Estate of Gustav Metzger and The Gustav Metzger Foundation
According to Hauser & Wirth, the works on the exhibition "explore the intersection between human intervention, nature and man-made environments, ideas the artist continued to interrogate over a six decade career." The exhibition is highlighted by ‘Liquid Crystal Environment’ (1965/2021), one of Metzger's most famous works, in which heat-sensitive liquid crystals create colours and patterns that are projected into the space.
The exhibition is divided into three sections: one showing early paintings and drawings from the 1950s, the auto-destructive "Acid Nylon painting" (1960/2004), and later works on paper which Metzger called ‘portraits of landscapes’, created 2003-2006.
About the artist: Gustav Metzger was born in Nuremberg in 1926, and moved to Britain in 1939 as a refugee. Later, he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (1948-49). He studied with Pete Townshend, who would later become the guitarist from The Who, so during the 1960s, Metzger's works were projected during The Who concerts. In 1959, he published his manifesto Auto-Destructive Art. In 2009, the Serpentine Gallery organized the most extensive exhibition in the United Kingdom of works by Metzger.

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