Mike Steiner: Contemporary Art Pioneer and Visionary of Berlin’s Avant-Garde

To step into the artistic world of Mike Steiner is to cross thresholds between genres, to move freely from painted surfaces to flickering screens and performance spaces. Mike Steiner’s contemporary art invites us to ask: How can one mind continually reinvent the dialogue between image, movement, and space? His restless push towards new forms has left an imprint on the culture of Berlin’s art scene—one that resonates far beyond the confines of traditional mediums.

Discover contemporary artworks by Mike Steiner—enter the curated selection of his legacy here

Mike Steiner’s trajectory began in post-war Berlin, where he was born in 1941. Early drawn to painting and film, by age 17 he debuted at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung with "Stillleben mit Krug." His entry into contemporary arts coincided with Berlin’s post-war reawakening—a place that would soon become a laboratory for radical transformation. Trained at the State Academy of Fine Arts in West Berlin, Steiner absorbed influences from the likes of Hans Jaenisch and Hans Kuhn, yet always kept an eye beyond painting’s horizon.

It was exposure to international movements—Pop Art, Fluxus, and the experimental currents of New York City—that truly marked Steiner’s path. Encounters with figures such as Lil Picard, Al Hansen, and Allan Kaprow unlocked a fascination for multimedia and participatory art. Berlin in the 1970s, a crucible for the avant-garde, became his primary stage. Like Joseph Beuys or Nam June Paik, Mike Steiner sought to break art free from the canvas, making it a lived, collective experience. Compared to contemporaries such as Marina Abramovi? or Richard Serra, Steiner was not just at the margins but central in charting new networks for artists and audiences alike.

Ever the innovator, in 1970 Steiner opened the legendary Hotel Steiner, a Berlin equivalent of the Chelsea Hotel, nurturing an international avant-garde and offering hospitality to luminaries from the worlds of Fluxus and performance. With the Studiogalerie, founded in 1974, Steiner established a crossroads for Berlin’s contemporary art—dedicated to the yet-nascent field of video art and live action. Here, international artists like Valie Export, Carolee Schneemann, and Jochen Gerz found an open stage, echoing the anarchic energy of performance and fluxus movements. The Studiogalerie became more than a space: it was a living archive, a home for the Berlin spirit of experimentation.

Among his most spectacular collaborative works was the 1976 performance and video ‘Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst,’ realized with Ulay and famously involving the temporary removal of Spitzweg’s "Der arme Poet." Such actions were not merely provocation, but deep engagements with the institutional and social crux of contemporary arts. Even today, these works stand as milestones in the documentation and democratization of ephemeral art—preserved in the very tapes Steiner obsessively collected.

Steiner’s collected art videos constitute a major resource for Berlin and Germany’s art history; his efforts are now remembered alongside those of major institutional pioneers like Wulf Herzogenrath or Gerry Schum. The impressive video collection, featuring early works by the likes of Gary Hill and Bill Viola, now resides in the Hamburger Bahnhof, the national gallery of contemporary art. The 1999 major solo exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof—the centerpiece of his institutional recognition—showcased the breadth of his color works and the vibrant plurality of his oeuvre. This show not only honored Mike Steiner’s painted and filmed legacies but enshrined his influence at the heart of official cultural memory.

His embrace of different media remained a constant. From Super-8 films and photography to copy art and hard-edge abstractions, Mike Steiner’s artistry was as restless as the city he called home. The ‘painted tapes’ he created in the 1980s fused the painted surface with video, establishing a new visual rhythm. Like German contemporaries Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke, Steiner navigated a complex relationship between abstraction and document, between making and archiving experience.

In the last decades of his life, abstract painting reemerged at the center of his artistic concern. Exhibitions in Berlin, San Francisco, and Leipzig highlighted this return—offering bright, saturated canvases that bore witness to a lifelong meditative inquiry. His late fabric works reveal another shift, turning tactile and spatial, affirming his drive to cross yet more boundaries. ‘Form, color, surface’—the essentials of painting—would become tools for yet another discourse, one inflected by decades of interdisciplinary reflection.

Steiner’s career was punctuated by institutional honors, from early group shows with Georg Baselitz and Karl Horst Hödicke to the serene abstractions of his mature period. The Berliner art cosmos grew because of figures like him—artists who not only made but enabled the work of others, as a curator, collector, and relentless advocate for new media and methods.

What unites Steiner’s oeuvre is risk—the perpetual leap into new contexts, the humility to let artforms mutate and audience take an active part. While contemporaries like Marina Abramovi? used performance to demarcate body and space, Steiner’s interdisciplinary approach collapsed such distinctions. His art remains ever vital—a touchstone for those drawn to the crossroads of media, moment, and meaning.

Today, Mike Steiner’s relevance for contemporary arts in Berlin is undiminished. The archive of tapes, the afterglow of collaborative events, and the painted abstractions, all confirm his place among the visionaries of late 20th-century art. The collection in the Hamburger Bahnhof—National Gallery of Contemporary Art—stands as a testament to a restless, multivalent creativity. Future generations of artists and viewers will find in Steiner not only a model of experimental practice but a guardian of collective memory.

To fully sense the power and diversity of Mike Steiner’s contemporary art, a visit to his official artist website is recommended. Explore archival footage, dive into his major works, and witness the ongoing resonance of an artist who never ceased to push boundaries—from abstract painting to video art and beyond.

Discover the multifaceted work and biography of Mike Steiner at his official artist website