heinz mack

Partita for Colors (Chromatic Constellation), 2007

The Painter’s Garden (Chromatic Constellation), 2001

The Sky Over Nine Columns, CAC Valencia, 2016

Untitled, 2012

Biography

Throughout his career, Heinz Mack (b. 1931, Lollar, Germany) has continuously carved a pioneering artistic production marked by investigations on light, temporality and movement, which have taken the form of major installations, as well as sculptures, paintings and works on paper. Mack began his career in the 1950s, famously founding the Group ZERO (1957-1966) alongside Otto Piene in 1957, later also joining forces with Gunther Uecker in 1961, with the aim of creating a space devoid of pre-existing structures for new possibilities and beginnings to emerge. Mack was also in close contact with artist Yves Klein, with whom he developed a great friendship and collaborated on numerous occasions, and who introduced him to Jean Tinguely, discovering a universe of experimentations that informed his own search for aesthetic purity, striving for an essential, unmediated work. Mack notably wrote, "The goal is to achieve pure, grand, objective clarity, free of romantic, arbitrarily individual expression. In my work I explore and strive for structural phenomena, whose strict logic I interrupt or expand by means of aleatoric interventions, that is, chance events."

Heinz Mack's oeuvre is characterized by disruptive engagements with light, and ways in which it affects and is affected by movement, space, and color. With this idea forming the core of his practice, the artist has rigorously and shrewdly developed a multi-faceted body of work that has recurrently opened new horizons for the realm of art.

selected solo exhibitions

Paragold, Nara Roesler, São Paulo, Brazil (2021)

Taten Des Lichts: Mack & Goethe, Goethe-Museum, Düsseldorf, Germany (2018)

Heinz Mack – From Time to Time. Painting and Sculpture, 1994-2016, Palais SchönbornBatthyány, Vienna, Austria (2016)

Mack – Just Light and Color, Sakip Sabanci Museum, Istanbul, Turkey (2016)

Heinz Mack – The light of my colors, Museum Ulm, Ulm, Germany (2015)

Mack – The Language of My Hand, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Germany (2011)

Heinz Mack – Licht der ZERO-Zeit, Ludwig Museum im Deutschherrenhaus, Koblenz, Germany (2009)

selected group exhibitions

The Sky as Studio – Yves Klein and his contemporaries, Centre Pompidou, Metz, France (2021)

Visual Play, Wilhelm Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen, Germany (2018)

New Beginnings: Between Gesture and Geometry, The George Economou Collection, Athens, Greece (2016)