ZERO

From the late 1950s on, the three young artists Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker had links with the international vanguard seeking an alternative to «Art Informel’»(«art without form»). With Lucio Fontana as their model, and Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni as artist colleagues, a new, cross-frontier purist aesthetic developed: objects between image and sculpture that projected form and colour into real space by means of light and kinetics. There was much fluctuation on the fringes of the movement, but the core of Group ZERO remained the three Düsseldorf-based artists. After participating in several international exhibitions, such as the «documenta 3» in 1964, ZERO was the first post-war German art movement to meet with success in New York. «A cluster of artists called Group ZERO has hit the U. S.,» wrote the New York Times. The paths of the founding trio of artists were beginning to diverge by that time, culminating in the break-up of the group in 1966.