Retrospective Exhibitions

1962 - First international museum exhibition by ZERO

Already in the early sixties the artist Henk Peeters presented the international director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Willem Sandberg, with monochromatic works of the young European artists' generation. In close exchange with Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker as well as Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni the original concept was further developed. This was the result of an exhibition which, besides monochromy, also concerned itself with color, vibration, light and movement. There were works by European artists, works from North and South America as well as from Japan. The exhibition was initiated, organized and financed by the artists themselves. The selection of the participants took place likewise by the artists, a curatorial direction according to our present understanding there was not. The exhibition was accompanied by a jointly developed catalog.

1993-1999 - Country-specific exhibition series on the ZERO movement

Between 1993 and 1999, four ZERO exhibitions took place at Galerie Villa Merkel in Esslingen, curated by art historian Renate Wiehager. The exhibition series, which is specific to the NUL Group from the Netherlands, ZERO Italy and ZERO Paris, ended in 1999 with the exhibition Zero Deutschland 1960. And today. Apart from the three protagonists of the German ZERO movement, she devoted herself to a further twenty artists whose works ranged from the late 1950s to the 1990s. Unlike in the 1960s, this series of exhibitions was not initiated, organized and financed by the artists. This series of publications was accompanied by four publications with a first comprehensive overview of ZERO as a European movement in four languages: German, English, Dutch and French.

2006 - First overview exhibition of the international ZERO movement

The Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf presented the first overview exhibition of the international ZERO avant-garde in 2006. The exhibition, organized and curated under the initiative of Jean-Hubert Martin and Mattijs Visser, exhibited paintings and installations by country. Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker curated their own areas. Henk Peeters, who had organized the historical ZERO exhibitions in 1962 and 1965 at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, consulted in the field of design, selection of artists and works. The Düsseldorf exhibition covered several aspects of the exhibitions from the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in the form of reconstructions of former installations.

2015 - The most comprehensive international ZERO exhibition in Berlin

The exhibition, opened in March 2015 at the Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, was conceived and organized jointly by artists and experts in the tradition of the ZERO movement. Various subjects - articulated in time, space, color, reflection, vibration, light and movement - showed works of art from the central years of the ZERO movement from 1957 to 1967. With around 40 artists, the exhibition followed the ZERO spirit, from two-dimensional paintings to the three-dimensional space. On a total of 3,000 square meters, artists from Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Venezuela, Switzerland, Japan, the USA and Brazil were represented with around 200 works and ten space-filling installations. Among them were some rare works from renowned collections such as the Georges Pompidou Center, the Morsbroich Museum, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Museum of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf. In addition, for the first time, works by several artists were shown: Manzoni, Verheyen, Fontana, Tinguely, Klein, Mack and Piene. The highlight of the collaboration was the space-saving historical installation Lichtraum (Hommage à Fontana) by Mack, Piene and Uecker, which was presented for the first time at the documenta III 1964. Heinz Mack presented an installation as homage to his already deceased ZERO friends. In the form of a ZERO chronology, the most important exhibitions and events were documented using previously unpublished photo and video material. In addition, the works that had previously been lost in the course of the preparation of the exhibition were still to be seen in this exhibition.