Gustav Metzger

Born in Nuremberg on 10 April 1926 to Jewish parents, he fled to Britain in 1939 as a refugee and spent the war years in various foster homes. He studied art in Cambridge, London, Antwerp, and Oxford between 1945 and 1953. In 1959 he issued the first manifesto of auto-destructive art, publicly demonstrated in 1961 when he corroded nylon sheets with acid before an audience on London's South Bank. He co-founded the Committee of 100 in 1960 and organised the Destruction in Art Symposium in London in 1966. His student Pete Townshend later credited Metzger's ideas as inspiration for The Who's guitar-smashing. He died on 1 March 2017.