Ruhender Verkehr

1965–1969

Collaboration with René Block

Together with René Block he creates exhibitions, happenings, multiples and publications.

1967

The happening “Miss Vietnam”

He stages the happening “Miss Vietnam” in Cologne, protesting against US aggression in Vietnam.

1970

Moves to Berlin

He moves to Berlin; the same year he creates “Heuschrecken” (“Locusts”), an installation with 20 monitors and a video camera, as well as the installations “TV-Schuhe” and “TEK”.

1970

“Concrete Traffic” in Chicago: a Cadillac in concrete

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago sponsors a happening in which Vostell encases a 1957 Cadillac in concrete in a parking lot near the museum. The work is then moved to the University of Chicago campus, where it remains for nearly four decades.

1974

Discovers Malpartida de Cáceres

He visits the village of Malpartida de Cáceres in Extremadura and the nearby rocky landscape of Los Barruecos: the bizarre granite boulders remind him of his own concrete sculptures, and he declares the place a “work of art of nature”. In the midst of this “surreal” landscape stands the 18th-century Lavadero de Lanas, and Vostell resolves to create a “meeting place of art, life and nature” here.

1974

First major retrospective in Paris and Berlin

His first major retrospective takes place at ARC 2 in the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; an expanded version is shown at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (other accounts give 1975).