Page 18 - Studio International - July 1965

The Story of Zero by John Anthony Thwaites

The Zero Group from Dusseldorf, Heinz The story starts with three connected elements: a
Mack, Otto Piene, Gunther Uecker, was personal relationship, a situation in society, a swing in
shown at the Mc Roberts and Tunnard the history of art. First was the friendship of two
Gallery in June, 1964. In January it had a students in the early Fifties. They were very different.
The Rhinelander Heinz Mack is blond, vivacious, some­
strikingly successful exhibition in New times a little showy; but his temperament in art is
York. Now the three artists can be seen at classical. Otto Piene, a Westphalian, is dark, reserved,
the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hanover. This romantic, but with a gift for contacts, organising and
personal group forms the core of a larger publicity. He is an intellectual, in the sense of needing
and looser association in Germany and as a to give ideas and intuitions form in words. In Beatrice
point of contact for groups in France, Webb's phrase, 'these two minds were marvellously
Holland, Italy and Yugoslavia. What attuned'. The situation of their meeting was West
follows is a short account of Zero's history German Reconstruction. Of this Otto Piene writes:
'Our suspicion of the soulless efficiency and shabby
neatness ... was fundamental. We despised the encom­
passing Christian materialism and saw in it a Western
version of the Socialist materialism of the Marxist
world, or as American materialism in miniature'.
In art in Germany, an imitated Action Painting was
about to merge into epigonal Tachisme. Writers were
exploiting the experience of the Forties. The time was

1
Heinz Mack
Light Dynamo 1965
Aluminium & Glass
2
Oskar Holweck
Mobile on the roof terrace of
the Faculty of Law and
Economics. University of
Saarland, 1963/64. Aluminium.
3.5m. high x 20m. long
3
Heinz Mack
Light Relief 1963
Aluminium
100 x 168 cm.
Collection: Peggy Guggenheim
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Heinz Mack
Light Relief 1960
Aluminium & Glass
45 x 70 cm.
2