Zéro Paris-Düsseldorf

Owing to its physical proximity to Paris and as a leading art venue in the 1950s, Düsseldorf offered artists the virtue of a location that was not to be underestimated.This was underscored by the personal contacts between the artists and favored by the skillful mediacy of the gallerists Jean Pierre Wilhelm and Alfred Schmela; a fruitful exchange between artistic concepts took place that pervaded the art life of both cities in a gamechanging way.If the traditional definition of an artwork had already been transformed by Informel painting, Galerie Schmela's 1957 opening exhibition of Yves Klein's monochromes set other new impulses. The Zero artists took up this challenge and - with Otto Piene's grid and fire paintings, Heinz Mack's light dynamos and light reliefs and Günther Uecker's nail pictures - founded a new international art vocabulary of monochromism, vibration and light.This book, with text and work examples by artists from the Rhenish and French metropolises - by Aubertin, Klein, Mack, Megert, Piene, Tinguely and Uecker - illustrates and documents this period's specific artistic climate.