ZERO
International Avant-garde of the 50s and 60s
09 April-9 July 2006
Curated by:
Jean-Hubert Martin
Heike van den Valentyn
Mattijs Visser
Lóránd Hegyi
museum kunst palast
Ehrenhof 4-5, 40479 Düsseldorf, Germany
Fon: 0049-(0)211 8996211
Fax: 0049-(0)211 8929504
Marina.schuster [at] museum-kunst-palast.de
With this internationally focused retrospective on ZERO, museum kunst palast pays homage to one of the most important avant-garde movements since 1950. Concentrating on the period of the beginning of the 1950s to the mid 1960s, the Düsseldorf art gallery will be showing paintings, sculptures, objects, installations, environments and spatial reconstructions of this widely networked artists movement which reached far beyond the European borders. The exhibition presents the mutual interaction between a range of ZERO groups in Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Japan, offering a comprehensive overview of the artistic movement. In all, the public will be shown over 250 works by 48 European and Japanese artists.
Artists in the ZERO movement revolutionized the artistic world with a modern self-image, new imagery and a new vocabulary of form. Distancing themselves quite deliberately from the expressive and emotive gestures of informal painting that had prevailed during the post-war years, ZERO artists in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium wanted to find new contemporary forms of expression.
The Düsseldorf exhibition shows that the contacts of ZERO extended as far as East Asia. The Japanese GUTAI movement was ideologically very close to the European avant-garde. Like its European counterpart, it had its roots in radical new beginnings, demanding an art that was focused on life.
The exhibition presents its works in three groups: monographic, in dialogue form and thematic. The central representatives of the movement including Klein, Mack, Piene, Uecker, Fontana, Castellani and Shiraga are dedicated their own rooms. The White Room and groups of works on the subjects of fire, light, reflection and vibration contain contributions from a wide variety of artists, given some fascinating insights into the diversity of aesthetic forms of expression. Also, a number of historic environments will be recombined and partly reconstructed especially for the exhibition. A separate documentation room will be available, presenting historical audio and video footage to illustrate the social and artistic climate of the 50s and 60s.
Catalogue
A richly illustrated 360-page catalogue has been published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, with articles by Bazon Brock, Tiziana Caianiello, Lóránd Hegyi, Valerie Hillings, Heinz-Norbert Jocks, Jean-Hubert Martin, Catherine Millet, Heike van den Valentyn, Mattijs Visser, Atsuo Yamamoto and Rainer Zimmermann.
Film
A film will be shown at the exhibition, featuring interviews with artists, conducted by Werner Raeune.
Subsequent venue of the exhibition:
Musée d’Art Moderne, Saint-Étienne, France
(prob. Sept. 15, 2006 Jan. 15, 2007)
SPONSORS AND SUPPORTERS
The exhibition is powered by E.ON AG, has been set up in collaboration with the Identity Foundation, is sponsored by Kunststiftung NRW and has the support of the Japan Foundation.
Media partners: Monopol, Westdeutsche Zeitung Cultural partner: WDR3 Hotel partner: Nikko Hotel, Düsseldorf Further partners: Castenow, Frankenheim, Goodyear, Knab Spedition
Sponsor of the ZERO series of events: degussa AG
The exhibition forms part of Quadriennale 06, ArtCity Düsseldorf
Opening hours: Daily 10 am 6 pm, closed on Mondays
Guided tours: Bookings 0211 899 0 200 (phone)
The Stiftung museum kunst palest is a public-private partnership between the state capital of Düsseldorf, E.ON AG, METRO Group and degussa AG.
