Zuecca Projects presents “20th Painting Action,” a major exhibition of Hermann Nitsch on view at Oficine 800 in Venice and drawn from Helmut Essl’s private collection in collaboration with Galerie Kandlhofer. The 20th painting action is the artist’s only to remain in one collection, and this marks the first Italian exhibition of these works since their original creation at the Wiener Secession, Vienna in 1987. From the very beginning of his career in the 1950s, Nitsch has aspired to what he calls “the sacralisation of all art,” heightening the viewer’s experience of sensory reality and instigating an ecstatic, contemplative reflection upon her own perception. These large-format, paint-poured works immerse the viewer in a pictorial, actionist panorama suspended between the momentary and the eternal, the dynamic and the static, the real and the symbolic, the pure and the defiled, immediacy and reflection. They are the fulfillment of his desire to sacralise art, embodying ritual action in pure color, immediate gesture, and compressed time.