ART CITIES:N.York-ZERO:Countdown to Tomorrow,1950s–60s
“ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s–60s,” is the first large-scale historical survey in the United States dedicated to the German artists’ group Zero (1957–66) founded by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene and joined in 1961 by Günther Uecker.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Archive
This Group was an international network of like-minded artists from Europe, Japan, and North and South America, including Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Yayoi Kusama, Piero Manzoni, Almir Mavignier, Jan Schoonhoven, and Jesús Rafael Soto, who shared the group’s aspiration to transform and redefine art in the aftermath of World War II. The Exhibition ‘’ZERO:Countdown to Tomorrow,1950-1960’’ features more than 40 artists from 10 countries, the exhibition explores the experimental practices developed by this extensive ZERO network of artists, whose work anticipated aspects of Land art, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art. ZERO, encompasses a diverse range of media including painting, sculpture, works on paper, installations, and archival materials such as publications and photographic and filmic documentation. The exhibition is organized around points of intersection, exchange, and collaboration that defined these artists’ shared history.
Among the themes explored by all these great and famous artists, that they gain a place in the history of contemporary art with their works, are the establishment of new definitions of painting (such as the monochrome, serial structures, and fire and smoke paintings), the introduction of movement and light as both formal and idea-based aspects of art, the use of space as subject and material, the interrogation of the relationship between nature, technology, and human and the production of live actions or demonstrations.
Info:«ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s–60s», Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Avenue (at 89th Street), N. York, Duration: 10/10/14-7/1/15, Days & Hours: Sun-Wed & Fri: 10:00-17:45, Sat: 10:00-19:45, www.guggenheim.org/new-york
