In the wake of devastation wrought by World War II, European artists who were part of the Zero movement, attempted to re-harmonize the relationship between humankind and nature, proclaiming the “zero hour” of postwar art.

In the wake of devastation wrought by World War II, European artists who were part of the Zero movement, attempted to re-harmonize the relationship between humankind and nature, proclaiming the “zero hour” of postwar art. In the late 1950s progressive artists developed a new visual language to create a “new art for a new age.” Using industrial materials and technology they explored light, kinetics, and structure in a minimalist practice as they distanced themselves from Expressionism. For Otto Piene, Heinz Mack, and Günther Uecker, who made up the German ‘inner circle’, the word Zero was complex. As a number it represented nothing, a zone of silence.  But as a shape it represented an endless form, a zone of pure possibility.

Beginning July 13, the Neuberger Museum of Art will present “The Art of Zero: Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, Günther Uecker & Friends,” an exhibition featuring 22 iconic works by Group Zero artists that have never been shown together in this context. The works are selected from the Neuberger’s Permanent Collection, and more specifically from the George and Edith Rickey Collection of Constructivist Art. Almost all of the works in the exhibition were gifts to Rickey from fellow artists in the spirit of collaboration and exchange, a philosophy of the Zero movement.