Raphael Montañez Ortiz
1934–
An active member of the New York avant-garde since the early 1960s, Raphael Montañez Ortiz has produced a body of work—in performance, video, film, painting, sculpture, and installation—that he once explained as an attempt to “come to terms with the anguish and anger at the core of man’s existence.” Ortiz began his studies in architecture at the Pratt Institute but soon turned to fine art, earning a BFA and MFA before completing a PhD at Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1982. During this time, Ortiz studied painting with Robert Rauschenberg while developing his own notions of construction and destruction in art and a deep interest in ritual, mysticism, anthropology, and psychology. These interests coalesced with Ortiz’s participation in the “Destruction in Art” symposia held in London in 1966 and at New York’s Judson Memorial Church in 1968, two notable gatherings of artists, writers, and thinkers associated with Destructivism, an international art movement that drew on Fluxus, Dada, and Futurist traditions.
One of Ortiz’s most renowned Destructivist works, Piano Destruction Concert, was performed at the Whitney in 1967; the artist created a protective salt circle around a grand piano, which he then destroyed with an axe. In 1996 he re-created the work at the Museum, resulting in a sculptural installation of wooden rubble displayed alongside a video of the performance. At once visceral, mystical, and political, the artist’s destructive action was believed to release the potential energy contained inside the object while disrupting the logical order of its form.
Country of birth
United States
Roles
Artist, digital artist, sculptor, video artist
ULAN identifier
500491346
Names
Raphael Montañez Ortiz
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed November 20, 2024.
