related artist
related exhibition

FOUNDATION NEWS

The ZERO foundation has opened its space next to the Düsseldorf harbour and houses the archives of Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, and Günther Uecker, with photographic documentation, publications, videos, and other historical documents. +++ The Stedelijk Museum in Schiedam (NL) is preparing a survey on ZERO international with the Dutch NUL group as starting point. The exhibition will be prepared in close collaboration with the ZERO foundation and is planned to open in September 2010. +++ The work “Cronotopo” (1963) by the Italian artist Nanda Vigo will be acquired by the ZERO foundation from the proceeds of the “auction” of the ZERO Edition in April last year. The Milan-based artist exhibited with many ZERO protagonists and in 1965 organised the exhibition ZERO “avant-garde” in Lucio Fontana’s studio. ‘Cronotopo” is one of her last remaining ZERO works. +++ In co-operation with the ZERO foundation, the Museo d’Arte Lugano will prepare a large exhibition that will illustrate the connections between Italian artists like Lucio Fontana or Galleria Azimut with ZERO Düsseldorf. The exhibition is scheduled for 2011. +++ A publication on ZERO & Italy is being prepared by the Fondazione Piero Manzoni in Milan. The book, and an accompanying documentary film, will be published by the art historian Francesca Pola, who was also responsible for “Manzoni e Albisola,” published in 2006, the first issue of the series “Quaderni dell’Archivio Opera Piero Manzoni.” The book contains some of the correspondence between Otto Piene and Piero Manzoni, for example. +++ The Biennale di Venezia, curated by Daniel Birnbaum, will show works by the Japanese artist group Gutai. Several works, donated by the artists Shozo Shimamoto and Saburo Murakami, are in the collection of the ZERO foundation. +++ For the exhibition series SPOT ON a publication is being prepared by Museum Kunst Palast in collaboration with the ZERO foundation on the history of the installation “Light Room (Homage à Fontana),” 1964, by Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker. +++

ZERO is the beginning

“ZERO is the beginning” stated the manifesto of the then five-year-old artists’ group ZERO, Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker, in 1963. It was viewed as a historical and artistic point zero, and developed innovative artistic principles as well as bold aesthetic ideas that were shaped by the spirit of times. The desire to experiment and find new materials for art and to link into an international network defined the innovative force of the ZERO artists, whose practice also reacted against Informel Art and Neo-Expressionism: not only aesthetic and material but also real borders would be overcome in a powerful spirit of change, hope and freedom. ZERO is viewed as one of the most important avant-garde movements of art history of the post-war period; even if we use the term avant-garde in its strictest sense, this is one of the last groups where this term can accurately be applied. The group began in Düsseldorf and went on to become an international presence.

ZERO is closely connected with the city of Düsseldorf: between 1957 and 1960 nine “Evening-exhibitions” were held in the studio in Gladbacher Straße 69; in 1959 Jean Tinguely dropped 150,000 sheets of paper containing his manifesto “For Statics” from a plane onto Düsseldorf; the first official presentation of Otto Piene’s “Light Ballet” was shown in Galerie Schmela in the same year, and in 1960 the same gallery presented Lucio Fontana’s first solo show in Germany. However the decisive exhibition “ZERO –Edition, Exposition, Demonstration” of the main ZERO artists, including Arman, Aubertin, Castellani, Klein, Mack, Manzoni, Mavignier, Peeters, Piene, Salentin, Schoonhoven, Spoerri, Tinguely and Uecker was held in Galerie Schmela on July 5, 1961. During the ZERO demonstration on May 16, 1962 Heinz Mack built a silver forest on the Rheinwiese in Düsseldorf, Günter Uecker pitched white sails there and Otto Piene sent balloons off into the night sky.

The events of this period make it very clear that the home of the ZERO foundation has to be in Düsseldorf, a city whose history is closely interlinked with the history of the ZERO movement. Equally, the Museum Kunst Palast, containing the former Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, was the perfect place to locate the foundation thanks to its history and its exhibition and collecting traditions. One of the finest highlights of the collection is the reconstruction of the kinetic light installation “Light Room (Homage à Fontana),” created by Mack, Piene and Uecker for documenta III in 1964: it is pointedly dedicated to Lucio Fontana, who was not invited to documenta.

The exhibition ZERO. “Internationale Künstler-Avantgarde der 50er/60er Jahre (ZERO. International Avant-garde Artists of the 1950s/60s)” was held in the Museum Kunst Palast in the spring of 2006. The museum was acutely aware of the importance of the artists’ movement and presented a comprehensive, international retrospective with around 250 works by 49 artists. Here too, the Museum Kunst Palast demonstrated its close links to the ZERO movement.

Our vision of a research centre that, within the Museum Kunst Palast, unites the existing archival and research area, like the Gerhard und Margarete Hoehme foundation, the Kaiserswerth art archive and the Rheinische Kunstszene photographic archive, as well as other archives and estates that are being developed and extended, takes a major step towards fulfillment through the creation of the ZERO foundation.

I would like to give thanks to the artists whose works inspired the creation of the foundation, and who have supported us through their works and extensive archival material. I would also like to thank Mattijs Visser, whose involvement made a major contribution to the creation of the ZERO foundation. I would also like to give especial thanks to the city of Düsseldorf for its role, and not just for the ZERO movement – above and beyond the call of duty – of art city, whose financial support has made the foundation possible.

I wish the ZERO foundation the very best and I look forward to their many diverse activities that will increase interest in and awareness of ZERO art and beyond, since, as has already been stated, ZERO is the beginning!

- Beat Wismer, General Director
Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf

OTTO PIENE in PARIS

The Utopia of the Rainbow
Otto Piene talks about Sky Art, Paris and the beauty of the sky

As part of the Nuit Blanche on October 4, 2008 in Paris, Otto Piene presented a sky event on Place de Catalogne, near the Montparnasse station. The artist, born in 1928 in Laasphe in Westphalia, Germany, founded ZERO with Heinz Mack in 1957. At the end of the 1960s, he was a resident fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT): an interdisciplinary and intermedia “laboratory of ideas”, of which he was director from 1974 to 1994. Here, at the end of the 1960s, the first major sky event took place. Multi-media works were also produced, and the artist was commissioned to design the opening and closing ceremonies of the XX Olympic Games in Munich.

The Paris sky event is the first project of the ZERO foundation in Düsseldorf. This interview with Otto Piene was held in summer 2008.

Heike van den Valentyn: It is surely no coincidence that you were asked to carry out this art project in the public realm in Paris. Your relationship to the French capital goes back many years.

Otto Piene: Since the beginning of the 1950s, really. I visited Paris for the first time in the summer of 1950; artists were moving to the city and I was studying at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf. It was my first really meaningful encounter with a culture that we only knew then from a few books and a few films.

HV:You soon met Yves Klein, with whom you exchanged ideas as one artist to another and a friendship ensued.

OP: Yes, the Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf came about seven years later, and the art created in that city was moving towards a kind of independence. The actual catalyst was the fact that we were finding out what art movement actually existed.

HV:How did you meet Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely and the other artists who were working in Paris for the first time?

OP: Through Alfred Schmela and his gallery. He invited foreign artists. Paris was like a great magnet. He opened his gallery in May 1957 with a Yves Klein exhibition; Yves attended with the art historian Restany. We went along as well and met him there. Yves invited us to visit him, which we did, six weeks later.

HV: Yves Klein is quoted as saying he was the only one who had overcome the problematic of art, and then admitted that you had also achieved this. There was a kind of affinity between the two of you. You both worked with air and fire. Your utopian ideas had an unexpected similarity.

OP: Yves Klein showed me and the others what an artist can do – on his own – if he just manages to coordinate his energies; to focus this energy in statements, manifestos and artistic expression.

HV: The Sky Art air sculptures refer back to the time when you were a member of the ZERO group, initially with Heinz Mack and then with Günther Uecker. In 1962 you held the legendary ZERO party at the Rheinwiese in Düsseldorf; here the performance character was fundamental, as is also the case with Sky Art.

OP:It goes even further. I was drawing people flying as early as 1952/53 when I was a student at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf. Simply because I felt like it, because that is what my pen did. That was the first step towards Sky Art – initially not at all methodologically or as a manifesto– it was truly spontaneous and instinctive. It was an anticipation of what I would do later in a more conscious way.

HV: How would you define the word utopia? In retrospect, what do you understand by artistic utopias?

OP: The concept of utopia is now changing from a concept towards making reference to the world. Utopia is in fact an ideal image of what humanity can imagine, expressed largely in images, which has the positive goal of making something real, of bringing it towards reality. It is thanks to utopias that some things get better.

HV: Yves Klein had the utopian idea of illuminating the obelisk on the Place de la Concorde in Paris with blue lights. This was not done until after his death. Your air sculptures created utopias that were merely ephemeral, but even so took on material form.

OP: Material in the literal sense. The material, the textiles, played an important role. I have used many other materials like polythene. Plastic plays a major role in Sky Art, not in the chemo-technical sense, but as a man-made object that does not occur in nature.

HV: In the beginning you mostly used transparent arch-shaped tubes.

OP: That was because of the helium. Helium is a material that I really enjoy working with, an element that is lighter than air and so rises up and moves things. If, for example, you put helium into a tube, and you do not do anything to prevent it, the tube will float away. If you hold on to one end, it becomes a moving, floating tube that is still connected to the earth. If you hold it at both ends, it becomes an arch. The arch takes on the shape of a rainbow.

HV: The rainbow took on a new significance of a concrete message of peace in view of the murder of Israeli Olympic participants. The “Black Stacks Helium Sculpture” in Minneapolis was another highly visible statement.

OP: That was intended to be “the writing on the wall” with regard to the deterioration of air quality, to the pollution of the atmosphere. The black chimneys belonged to a defunct power station. The red part of the tubes, which was moved about by the wind, was intended to be a kind of warning. The environmental movement was already critical in the middle of the 1970s. The sky events made an explicit reference to the sky. A game to make us aware of how we live and what allows us to live. It is ironic that Pittsburgh really is a cleaner city today. You could say that the voices of the artists also helped to make people aware of such negative developments.

HV: Sky events take place at very different locations. You go into an urban environment, into the countryside and look for art locations. Do you have specific criteria in mind?

OP: Some locations are especially ugly and some are especially beautiful. Sky Art is not just a moral institution. Respect for the sun does not just refer to respect for the energy it gives us, and the life it enables; it is also the fascination of its beauty and the wonder of the cosmos.

HV: Is there any connection between the Paris event and previous Sky Art projects?

OP:The Sky Art that I practice requires a great deal of experience. I could not do anything if I had not experienced my own history. I will use two new floating sculptures in Paris. The design is based on the basic image of the star, which moves and must adapt itself to the elements. In my opinion, this movement is one of the most beautiful elements of the floating sculptures. The wind and the interaction between helium and human ability that work upon it create a kind of movement that is not possible using technology. The movements made by the engines of kinetic art are usually loud and fast and potentially aggressive. The movements created when helium interacts with wind are much more graceful, gentle and slow. Unless the wind picks up speed, that is, then it can get very dramatic. It is this experience of the powers of nature, this dialogue with natural energies that is ironically known as alternative energy today.

HV: Is Sky Art also a kind of re-creation of your utopias?

OP: In a certain way, it is. I also see sky events as a kind of construction of a model. Structures are created that can be understood as initial architectural forms. Soft air sculptures and stone architecture have a very important relationship for me. Architecture is also connected to structural engineering, which is concerned with weight. The air sculpture of Sky Art largely investigates things that, in their very essence, are lighter than air.

HV: Sky Art developed from largely linear forms; in recent decades, abstract floral patterns, animals, heavenly bodies and mythological figures have been added.

OP: The balloon is a basic form. It is an extremely economical form; it can be made to float using helium or hydrogen, the latter being more dangerous. An incredible economy exists between filling it up, buoyancy and the impetus to float. Then I used polythene in the form of tubes, which has a certain intrinsic mobility. You can make arches with polythene and helium that create themselves out of buoyancy and their connection to the earth. Associations are created from this game, for example, the idea that human beings can fly. When a human being is involved, associations are created automatically for the viewers. They are reminded of mythology, of the world of animals. When human beings fly, then Icarus, who is very popular again today, comes to mind. We are again reminded that he was the first of us to fly.

- Interview by Heike van den Valentyn with Otto Piene

ZERO IN NEW YORK

On November 6, 2008, the exhibition ZERO in New York 2008 opened in the famous Sperone Westwater Gallery, with over 50 works by 21 artists. This concentrated cross-section of the ZERO period from 1958 to 1966, containing comparisons, thematic ensembles and a light room leading to a museum show, found a positive echo, and not only in the press. Curators from noted New York museums are considering dedicating an individual exhibition to this movement, little known in the USA.

A gorgeous, museum-like exhibition of works by members of the Zero Group, a loose association of ’60s-era European avant-gardists, is at Sperone Westwater […]. The exhibition is a fascinating window onto a time when progressive artists believed they could start from ground zero, as it were, and it includes some exceedingly attractive objects. […] Mr. Piene’s lamp sculptures are worth a visit by themselves. Boxy constructions of polished aluminium and textured glass by Nanda Vigo are sleekly crystalline. And Yves Klein’s panels covered by colored, granular pigments are vividly sumptuous.

- New York Times, November 14, 2008

It was with particular insight that we appreciated the rare, museum level exhibition organized by […] Sperone Westwater […]. From 133 ZERO participants the gallery focused on 21 artists. This provided a capsule or thumbnail sketch of what one hopes will eventually emerge as a major
project for an American museum. This is work that deserves to be shown in depth. It is also fair to say that other than a handful of artists the majority of this work was unfamiliar to the New York art world.

- Berkshire Fine Arts, January 7, 2009

A reductivist abstraction embodying moral purification marked the beliefs of Group ZERO (1957-1966) or, as it is often called, plainly, ZERO. […] While marking a new, Italian-German entente, ZERO represented more than the idées fixes of yet another clique of perfectionist cranks
and quickly became a proto-European Union, attracting many well-known French, Suiss (notably Jean Tinhguely), Belgian, and Dutch artists, not to say Latin American and even Japanese artists (e.g., the Gutaï group).

- Artforum, February 2009

ABOUT COLLECTING

The European Vision
A conversation with Anneliese Lenz about ZERO and the Lenz Schönberg Collection

Heike van den Valentyn: Your collection is always thought about in connection with ZERO. As well as the German artists, Mack, Piene, Uecker, Graubner and Holweck, to name only a few, Castellani, Fontana, Klein, Manzoni, Mavignier, Megert, Tinguely and Verheyen are also represented. But the list goes on.

Anneliese Lenz: There are now 50 artists in the collection and almost 600 works. We decided very early on to limit our collection to the ZERO artists. Through our collection, we would like to show that these artists weremaking new art all over Europe and we want to bring this art to life. After the war the artists wanted to do something completely new. We found that interesting.

HV: That means that ZERO was a new departure for you, one that you had more confidence in than being active within the art context alone, almost in the sense of a force that “unifies peoples”.

AL: That is perhaps going too far, but my husband was aware of the European idea. We found our way back to ourselves via these international European artists. ZERO influenced many areas of life, for example, design, publicity and advertising. ZERO became a language.

HV: At what point did you feel you had a collection and why did you decide to make it public?

AL: We were not collectors at the beginning. As Yves Klein once said, suddenly you realise that you are a painter. And one day we realised that we were collectors. Today, due to the economic boom, the word “collector” now has negative overtones; today you do not really want to be known as a collector.

As for exhibitions, we did not become active until much later. The first exhibition in the middle of the 1970s in the State Gallery in the Städel Art Institute was not our choice. We did not really start organizing exhibitions until 1985. Up till that point we keep our paintings around us. They were our paintings, our children. Then came the point that we let them go, and they had to go by themselves.

HV: But even today many works are on display in your home.

AL: I would say that we display all of them. Either in our home, or in my husband’s office in Salzburg, there are many there. Some are also in storage. But we live surrounded by art.

HV: The way that you exhibit the works brings the collection to life. Some are hung individually; other walls are filled “all over” with paintings that are hung right next to each other.

AL: Yes, if we consider the large wall in the living area, it is almost like the Petersburg style, which is of course not right. In the first exhibition in Salzburg all the paintings were placed on steel bases. After that we knew that we could hang the paintings very close together. We have the feeling that the paintings embrace each other. As you said, the entire building is not filled with paintings, there are also some that stand out, that are hung separately on a wall.

HV: It is unusual that your sons were involved from the very beginning. Did they make suggestions about which works should be bought?

AL: About 15 years ago, we created a four-person “purchasing committee”, but even so my sons and I still do not have strong influence on acquisitions; the initial and final decisions are made by my husband. He is the spirit of the collection, and nothing will change that.

HV: You mentioned that the collection began with ZERO.

AL: Yes, that is right. At the very beginning I wanted to buy a Nolde watercolour. My husband wanted to buy a Soulages piece. This is what we were interested in. However at some point, he ended up in an Evening-exhibition by Otto Piene in Düsseldorf and was horrified, devastated. He said that he would not be able to visit a museum again for several years. Then came the first painting by Jef Verheyen. My husband identified himself so much with the painting that he said “this is it”. Of course, we could have collected works from other movements, since we knew that what we collected would link us to the world; that was evident early on.

HV: Your husband saw the evening exhibition in Mack and Piene’s studio in Gladbacher Strasse in Düsseldorf; does that mean that you were there when ZERO first emerged at the end of the 1950s?

AL: That was in 1958. I was taking Piene’s watercolour class. I told him that later, and he said that he had bought paint and canvases with the money he earned.

HV: Did you also have contact to the other artists early on?

AL: No, I did not have direct contact to Piene either. I was interested in colour theory at the time. We were young men and women who were creating non-representational paintings and who wanted to know what the teachers thought about them.

HV: However over the years, you became close to some of the artists in your collection.

AL: It was because I took photographs, which I still do, which meant I had a lot of personal contact to the artists. My husband was also involved, but his contact to the artists is of a different kind.

HV: You dedicated a book of your photographs to your husband. There, the dynamism of the encounters around the exhibitions and other events is very evident.

AL: I took quick shots that caught the atmosphere very well.

HV: The expression “European Avant-garde” is often used in connection to your exhibition titles. To what extent do you understand ZERO as something beyond the Düsseldorf group and that environment?

AL: At that time we had begun to collect artists who had exhibited together. In Frankfurt or in Belgium. When certain artists exhibited together and we saw their work in this context, it was a decisive moment for us. We did not actually know much about ZERO. We only knew that these artists and their works belonged together.

HV: Did you regularly visit ZERO exhibitions?

AL: Yes, even when they were not designated as ZERO exhibitions. We were close friends with Rochus Kowallek and so this period became accessible to us. The contact to Belgium came via Belgian friends.

HV: Why did you decide to show your collection all over Europe, even in Moscow, in the 1980s although you began collecting at the end of the 1950s/beginning of the 1960s. You could say you have an exhibition history?

AL: Yes that is true. It was the right time to do it. After we had exhibited in Salzburg, we were always being asked to exhibit in other places. My husband had a vision of Europe before Europe even existed. My husband spoke of a Europe that stretched from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains. That has always been a strong motivating force for him. Even so we did not want a touring exhibition. The artworks always came back to us, and stayed for a while before starting on their travels again.

HV: In the 1950s, ZERO began to overcome the borders of post-war Europe and to create something new, beyond any national sense of belonging. The Düsseldorf ZERO artists were in Paris very early on, made contacts with Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and also to Zagreb.

AL: The artists understood the European idea at a very early stage. It was the last European group. After that the art scene became more globalised.

HV: You soon began work on your archive and engaged art historians to analyse the collection.

AL: I would not say immediately. But shortly after we began collecting, my husband purchased many works. Then we looked for art historians who could work on the documentation. This was very important to my husband and me.

HV: This demonstrates how intensively you were involved in this period.

AL: My husband had never read anything about the period, and simply collected works according to his gut feeling. Even the feeling for quality is completely intuitive. He did not let anyone else tell him what to buy. I think that the authenticity of the paintings was the reason for starting the archive. We did not want to read about what we had collected; we wanted to document the context of the creation of the artwork. This also included books and catalogues. The archive did not influence the art we went on to collect; much more it was the conversations with the artists themselves. My husband always wanted to know what the artists, whose work he was buying, had done before and what had been created afterwards. He has always found that extremely interesting.

HV: Even if it was your husband, to a large extent, who built up the collection, I have the feeling that the entire family identified with this passion.

AL: A private collection that has been shown twelve times in Europe is not a very common, or rather, is a very rare event. However since the paintings were part of our lives and our two sons also had this view, the entire family was always involved when an exhibition was being organised. As well as friends of the children, and of course the artists. It is a large family business.

HV: One exception is the fact that your exhibitions are repeatedly curated by the artists whose works are in your collection.

AL: That is a great piece of luck. It was done to great effect in the Museum Carolino Augusteum in Salzburg in 1985 when Günther Uecker was in charge of artistic direction.

HV: There is a photograph of the Salzburg exhibition that shows the paintings displayed on stele. Is that a homage to the early ZERO exhibition forum 62 in St. Pietersabdij in Ghent?

AL: Yes, the Salzburg presentation made reference to that. We were not concerned with presenting our collection but that a collection was shown instead. You could not see the paintings properly, just experience the incredible number of them.

HV: Ultimately Gotthard Graubner viewed the collection differently.

AL: Yes, that was in 2006 in the Museum of Modern Art on Mönchsberg in Salzburg. It was a stroke of luck that everything worked out. The museum and the collection inspired each other. Even though there are paintings that I would liked to have shown in the exhibition, which were
not shown, it was simply fantastic!

HV: This creates a new view of your collection for you, through the signature of the curator, producing a certain distance.

AL: I was also inspired by the exhibitions curated by Hannah Weitemeier. Every exhibition had a different character and inspired us in a new way, since every view of the paintings creates a different correlation for me. The language of the paintings was always a new one. We did not
hang the works chronologically; instead it was according to other criteria. That was a great achievement of Hannah Weitemeier.

HV: Do you collect art today with the same intensity?

AL: No, but we keep up with our close friends.

HV: That means that you concentrate on specific artists in your collection?

AL: I do not want to say that we concentrate on them, but we keep up with them, like Günther Uecker, Gotthard Graubner, Roman Opalka and Karl Prantl.

HV: In which context do you see the Austrian sculptor Kurt Prantl in the collection, since he is not a ZERO artist?

AL: No, he is not a ZERO artist and does not like to be described as such. Even so, we feel that his stone sculptures are so reductive, they bring us back to point zero; therefore we decided that he belonged in the collection.

HV: Does this point of view also apply to Roman Opalka and Dusan Dzamonija, for example?

AL: Opalka did not begin with zero, but with one (laughs). His language is very reductive and some thoughts, like those in the work of Yves Klein, are also to be found contemporaneously in Opalka. We sense a spiritual affinity, even if the artists are not ZERO artists.

HV: Could you imagine making your collection available permanently to the public, since you already work with institutions?

AL: We would like to live with our art. Therefore it should not be hung in a museum that we have to visit in order to see our collection. In the Museum of Modern Art in Salzburg, my husband said that he could imagine setting up his bed and his desk there, and living there. That has happened in the past. Whenever our works have been displayed, we have gone to visit our “children”. Whether in Zagreb or in Moscow, we always had the impression that a certain harmony or internal cohesion existed, and so we were always happy with the respective end result.

HV: Is there a catalogue that covers the entire collection?

AL: No, but there will be one. We are working on it now and hope that the publication will be out this year.

HV: You are a member of the board of trustees of the ZERO foundation. What would you like this new foundation to achieve?

AL: Finally ZERO has a home, a permanent location. Everyone was doing some research: we did some, the Museum Kunst Palast did some, and other locations were also carrying out research. Rochus Kowallek has a lot of files and Hubertus Schoeller was also doing research. It is very advantageous that this material will be brought together in one location. In other archives, for example that of Yves Klein, this period is being analysed so that the many different pieces of the jigsaw puzzle can bit fitted together. It is not necessary that every file is stored at the ZERO foundation, but the knowledge needs to be brought together. It is important that there is a central point of contact, where research is carried out and where publications are made. One example is the correspondence between the artists. However it is necessary that this is of good quality, that it has a scholarly, art-historical foundation.

Interview by Heike van den Valentyn with Anneliese Lenz

TRAVELLING CIRCUS:

Armando
“The splendour of the ordinary: Armando in the sixties,” through September 6, 2009, Armando Museum, Amersfoort/Netherlands

Enrico Castellani
“Enrico Castellani,” through June 27, 2009, Haunch of Venison, New York

Gianni Colombo
“Ambienti,” through August 2, 2009, Haus Konstruktiv im ewz-Unterwerk Selnau, Zurich

Lucio Fontana
“Le scrittture del disegno,” through June 26, 2009, Fondazione Arnoldo Pomodoro, Milan

“Historias del Confin (G),” through November 15, 2009, IVAM, Valencia

“Target Practice: Critiques of Painting 1949-1978 (G),” June 25 through September 13, 2009, Seattle Art Museum

Gerhard von Graevenitz
“Sommerauslese (G),” June 18 through August 29, 2009, Galerie Edith Wahlandt, Stuttgart

Gotthard Graubner
“Chapeau, mon ami,” through August 1, 2009, Galerie m, Bochum

Yves Klein
“Yves Klein & Rotraut,” through September 13, 2009, Museo d'Arte Lugano & Scultura in città, Lugano

“Marie Raymond - Yves Klein,” October 13 through beginning January 2010, Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid

Adolf Luther
“Der Mond (G),” through August 16, 2009, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne; September 26, 2009 through January 10, 2010, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston/Texas

“Adolf Luther,” December 2009 through March 2010, Karl-Ernst-Osthaus Museum, Hagen/ Germany

Heinz Mack
“Kunst im Kalten Krieg, 1945 - 1989 (G),” through September 26, 2009, Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg; October 3, 2009 through January 1, 2010, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin

“Das Prinzip Zufall (together with Daniel Spoerri),” August 30 through November 1, 2009, Ludwig Museum, Koblenz

“3rd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (G),” September 24 through October 22, 2009, Moscow

Christian Megert
“Abstraktionen – Ungegenständliche Tendenzen aus der Sammlung (G),” through August 9, 2009, Kunstmuseum Aarau/Switzerland

“POSITIONEN 09 (G),” July 13 through September 30, 2009, Das Seewerk, Moers

“Christian Megert,” September 19 through December 19, 2009, Galerie Edith Wahlandt, Stuttgart

François Morellet
“La quadrature du carré, une introspective,” through September 27, 2009, Museum Ritter, Waldenbuch/Germany

“François Morellet,” November 21, 2009 through January 17, 2010, Museum für Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt/Germany

“L’esprit d’escalier,” December 2009 «Intégration pérenne» au Musée du Louvre, Paris

Uli Pohl
“20 Jahre Galerie Emilia Suciu (G),” through end 2009, Galerie Emilia Suciu, Ettlingen

Daniel Spoerri
“Daniel Spoerri – Recent Assemblages,” through July 10, 2009, Galerie Levy, Hamburg

“Rüstung und Robe (G),” through August 30, 2009, Museum Tinguely, Basel/Switzerland

“Eat Art (G),” November 28, 2009 through February 28, 2010, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

herman de vries
“unity,” through June 7, 2009, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterloo/Netherlands

“ambulo ergo sum,” through June 21, 2009, Musée Gassendi, Digne-les- Bains/France

“all this here,” June 27 through October 25, 2009, Museum Schloss Moyland, Bedburg-Hau/Germany

Gotthard Graubner, Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, Günther Uecker, a.o. in:
“60 Jahre. 60 Werke.(G),” through June 14, 2009, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin

Arman, Pol Bury, Enrico Castellani, Piero Dorazio, Lucio Fontana, Hermann Goepfert, Gotthard Graubner, Yves Klein, Heinz Mack, Piero Manzoni, Almir Mavignier, Christian Megert, Otto Piene, Jan Schoonhoven, Jesús Rafael Soto, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, Günther Uecker, Jef Verheyen, a.o. in:
“ZERO lebt (G),” through November 1, 2009, Kunsthalle Weishaupt, Ulm/Germany

Enrico Castellani, Lucio Fontana, Gotthard Graubner, Yves Klein, Heinz Mack, Piero Manzoni, Henk Peeters, Otto Piene, Günther Uecker, a.o. in:
“In-Finitum (G),” June 6 through November 15, 2009, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice/Italy

Idea and realisation: Tijs Visser & Heike van den Valentyn
Translation: Eileen Laurie

For questions, remarks, ideas write or email to info@zerofoundation.de or ZERO foundation, Zollhof 11, D-40221 Düsseldorf

Photo: HENK PEETERS + GUNTHER UECKER + HEINZ MACK + AD PEETERS + MONIKA AND ALFRED SCHMELA
Painting by Robert Indiana