Mike Steiner: Contemporary Art Pioneer Between Painting, Video and Performance

Mike Steiner shaped contemporary art with groundbreaking video art, legendary installations and an avant-garde spirit. Discover how his bold ideas continue to inspire the art world today.

Mike Steiner’s artistic universe is unmistakable. His signature style lives at the crossroads of contemporary art—a restless oscillation between expressive painting, pioneering video works and conceptual installations. When observing his oeuvre, one is compelled to ask: how does one truly redefine the line between painting and the moving image, and what does it mean to make the ephemeral permanent? Mike Steiner’s trajectory offers few simple answers, but instead, immersive departures into the frontier zones of Contemporary Arts Berlin.

Right from the beginning, Mike Steiner marked himself as a force of unwavering invention. Born in 1941 in Allenstein and later based in Berlin, he entered the scene as a teenage painter, making an early splash at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung in 1959. The young Steiner’s paintings—bristling with energy and chromatic tension—signal the emergence of an artist perpetually in search of new forms and profound resonance.

The 1960s and early 1970s found Mike Steiner navigating the various territories of abstraction and pop-inflected painting, all while immersing himself in the bohemian circles of West Berlin and, crucially, New York. His time abroad, particularly through associations with Lil Picard, Al Hansen, and Allan Kaprow, forged not only technical and conceptual kinships but also exposed him to the heart of Fluxus and Happenings—two currents that would forever inform his methods. Like Robert Rauschenberg and Joseph Beuys, whose names echo through any serious discussion of contemporary art, Mike Steiner became a key agent in the international dialogue of avant-garde practices.

In 1970, Mike Steiner founded the immensely influential Hotel Steiner in Berlin, a creative haven likened to New York’s Chelsea Hotel. Within its walls, conversations and spontaneous acts blurred boundaries between art forms. It is no coincidence that personalities such as Joseph Beuys and Marina Abramovi? would find their way into Steiner’s orbit; his hotel and later the Studiogalerie (established in 1974) became crucibles for radical creativity. Here, Steiner not only exhibited his work but also provided resources—video equipment, space—for emergent artists to experiment, much in the spirit of Nam June Paik or Bill Viola, who pushed video as medium just as Steiner did.

The mid-1970s signaled a decisive shift: Mike Steiner, increasingly doubtful about the limits of traditional painting, plunged into video art. This move was not abandonment but expansion—an act mirroring his belief that every form, color and gesture could migrate into new territory. Early collaborations with Al Hansen, and productions with other major artists, birthed seminal works. The Studiogalerie became a Berlin counterpart to Florence’s Art/Tapes/22, fostering independent video, action art, and performance. Steiner’s own camera frequently witnessed events that would define the history of performing arts, including the iconic Freeing the Body (1976) by Marina Abramovi?, and Ulay’s infamous action, Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst.

Few artists have operated as both documentarian and generator of art historical moments. Mike Steiner’s camera provided a fresh viewpoint: the ephemeral became archive, the performance captured and reframed as living, moving image. He championed feminist avant-garde positions—offering platform to Valie Export and Carolee Schneemann—and challenged the boundaries of what could be seen as art in Berlin, rivaling the cross-media experiments of contemporaries like Yoko Ono or Allan Kaprow.

As the 1980s unfolded, Steiner’s role evolved into that of cultural mediator and collector. His celebrated TV format Videogalerie (1985–1990) on Berlin cable set new standards for art mediation, much like Gerry Schum’s Fernsehgalerie had done. Over 120 episodes brought the texture of video art into living rooms, introducing artists, works and events to a broader public—an advance that underscored Steiner’s talent not just for creation but for curation. His vast video art collection, begun in the 1970s, grew into one of Europe’s most vital archives, now held at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart.

The singular moment of recognition came in 1999, when the Hamburger Bahnhof honored Mike Steiner with a large-scale solo exhibition, Color Works. The show foregrounded how Steiner’s artistic thinking could never be hemmed in by a single discipline—malerei und video, abstraction and documentation, all merged in an energetic vision. Reviews highlighted his multimedia intellectual agility, situating him alongside artists such as Richard Serra and Gary Hill, who similarly traversed media with experimental vigor.

Despite suffering a stroke in 2006, Mike Steiner continued creating in his Berlin studio, increasingly returning to abstract paintings and fabric works. These late abstractions reveal a mature serenity but never boredom—each composition occupies the fertile space between accident and control, echoing in modern dialogues of artists like Gerhard Richter or Rosemarie Trockel.

Throughout, Mike Steiner’s biography reads as a treatise on the contemporary: always in movement, ever open to new forms and collaborations, drawing influence from encounters and friendships across continents and decades. His archive is testament not just to his own work, but the web of relationships and movements—Fluxus, Happening, Minimalism—that he helped foster. That spirit of boundary-crossing, of relentless curiosity, remains perhaps his greatest legacy for today’s artists and audiences alike.

Why, then, does Mike Steiner’s work remain strikingly relevant? In an age where barriers between creative genres dissolve faster than ever, Steiner’s career illustrates the power of the interdisciplinary avant-garde—where video, painting, performance and installation converse in perpetual flux. His investigations into the limits of the image and the event, the role of art in everyday life, and the documentation of fleeting acts form the DNA of contemporary art as we know it.

For collectors, curators and aficionados of contemporary art, Mike Steiner’s archive is an inexhaustible resource. The emotional urgency of his paintings, the documentary pulse of his video works and the daring energy of his installations invite both study and admiration. Intrigued? Explore more at the official Mike Steiner art site and encounter the full reach of a truly pioneering spirit.

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