Günter Brus (born 27 September 1938, Ardning, Styria, Austria) is an Austrian painter, performance artist, graphic artist, experimental filmmaker and writer. Brus grew up in Mureck, attended the and went to Vienna in 1956, where he studied painting and met his lifelong friend Alfons Schilling. Influenced by German expressionism, Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh, abstract expressionism and artists such as Emilio Vedova, he began in the fall of 1960 to create artwork that was not confined to visual media.