The artist known for his pioneering and often dangerous work with Marina Abramović dies of cancer

The performance artist Ulay has died in Ljubljana, Slovenia, aged 76. He had been suffering from lymphatic cancer.

Born Frank Uwe Laysiepen in Germany, Ulay and his then-partner, the Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović, became renowned for 14 “relation works”. Conceived over a decade in which the pair lived together in a Citroën van most, if not all, the works involved feats of danger and endurance with the purported aim of annihilating each of their egos and becoming a single artistic entity.

In Light/Dark from 1977, Ulay and Abramović knelt opposite one another and slapped each other across the face with increasing ferocity. Three years later, the work Rest Energy saw Ulay point a drawn bow and arrow at Abramović’s heart – a slight movement of one finger could have killed her. In a series of performances called Nightsea Crossing, the pair sat in chairs opposite each other for seven hours a day.

The Lovers, Ulay and Abramović’s final work together, commemorated the end of their relationship. Starting in April 1988, each started walking from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China, Ulay in the Gobi desert and Abramović by the Yellow Sea. After walking more than 1,500 miles each, they met in the middle and, without speaking, bade each other farewell. The performance caused amazement. “Every time I came to a village, the entire village would come and look at me,” Abramović told the Art Newspaper.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ulay and Abramović in Light/Dark

Ulay first found fame as an artist after moving to Amsterdam and becoming a photographer for Polaroid. Experimenting with the film and cameras the company gave him, his Polaroids from the early 70s explore his own identity, depicting him cross-dressed or self-mutilated. After splitting from Abramović he returned to the Polaroid, in the early 90s experimenting with a giant camera that produced “Polagram” images taller than the artist himself.

In 2010, he surprised Abramović by taking a seat opposite her during her durational performance piece The Artist Is Present at MoMA in New York. The pair had not spoken for decades, but clasped hands and cried.

The following year Ulay was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. Two years later the documentary, Project Cancer: Ulay’s Journal from November to November, charted his treatment, life and work. After chemotherapy, Ulay went into remission but continued to smoke.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ulay took a seat opposite Abramović during her performance piece The Artist Is Present at MoMA in New York.

He sued Abramović in 2015, claiming that she had withheld money owed to him and not fully credited his part in their artworks, resulting in the Serbian artist being ordered to pay him €250,000 (£215,000) plus costs. In the aftermath, however, the two became friendly again, participating in a 2017 film, The Story of Marina Abramović and Ulay, which charted the course of their relationship. “Everything naughty, nasty disagreements or whatever from the past, we dropped,” Ulay said in the film. “It’s a beautiful story, actually.”

Ulay’s gallery, Richard Saltoun, confirmed Ulay’s death with the statement: “Ulay was the freest of spirits – a pioneer and provocateur with a radically and historically unique oeuvre, operating at the intersection of photography and the conceptually oriented approaches of performance and body art. His passing leaves a momentous gap in the world – one that will not be so easily replaced.”