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Born Frank Uwe Laysiepen on November 30, 1943 in Solingen, Germany, the artist better known as Ulay passed away on March 2, 2020.

“This particular painting, you could say, was a German-identity icon. Asides, it was Hitler’s favorite painting. To break away from what I had done before, for a new chapter, to enter something new, but also to give a really strong signal of what I am about – as an artist at the time, 1976 – I decided to steal the painting.” —Ulay

In this 2017 video from the Louisiana Channel Ulay recounts in an interview “one of the most radical performances in art history” – the story of when he stole Hitler’s favorite painting from the National Gallery in Berlin in 1976.

From the Louisiana Channel:

“All I wanted to do was get this painting, steal it, run out of the museum with my hands and feet, no technique or assistance for doing this.” After he succeeded in getting the painting out of the museum, Ulay drove – with the museum guards at his heels – to Kreuzberg, which was known as a ghetto for immigrants. Here, Ulay ran through the snow with the painting under his arm, to a Turkish family, who had agreed to let him shoot a documentary film in their home – however unaware that it involved a stolen painting. Before entering the family’s home, the artist called the police from a phone booth and asked for the director of the museum to pick up the painting. He then hung up the painting in the home of the family “for the reason to bring this whole issue of Turkish discriminated foreign workers into the discussion. To bring into discussion the institute’s marginalization of art. To bring a discussion about the correspondence between art institutes from the academy to museums to whatever.”

[…]

In the video, clips are shown from the performance ‘There’s a Criminal Touch to Art’ (1976) by Ulay, showing Ulay’s theft of Carl Spitzweg’s painting ‘Der arme Poet’ from the Neue Nationalgalerie and the consequent reception by the press. Marina Abramović photographically documented the entire action, while Werner Herzog’s former cameraman Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein recorded the action from a vehicle following Ulay’s van.