Vostell concrete 1969-1973 Wolf Vostell

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Fluxus co-founder Wolf Vostell (1932–1998) used concrete as an actual material and an artistic motif in a surprising, unique body of work that includes the colossal sculpture Concrete Traffic.

During this time, Vostell mobilized concrete’s ambivalent connotations of permanence and inflexibility, strength and violence, to engage with postwar urbanism, particularly German reconstruction and American urban renewal; with unrest and war, including the civil rights marches in Selma, the Paris student protests, the Vietnam and Cold wars; and with the international, if not yet global world, particularly as manifest in transatlantic travel, postcards, and the Munich Olympics.