A Atelier

Heinz Mack’s (b. 1931) response to the request to describe the location and premises he shared with Otto Piene (1928–2014) in the rear building at Gladbacher Strasse 69, in Düsseldorf, depoeticizes. His words dispense with the notion of the atelier as a mysterious, mythical place of artistic creation that is anchored in the collective consciousness, as evoked by numerous pictorial representations à la Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), and instead create the image of an “other” space. This otherness certainly refers first and foremost to the contrast with the outlined topos. In Mack’s statement, there is also an echo of a differentiated understanding of space that, on the one hand, distinguishes between the built, physical, and as such visible space—the space in the old factory—and, on the other, the space that is projected onto this actual space: the atelier.

The idea of double or multiple spatiality in one and the same geographical location can be found in a text by Michel Foucault (1926–1984) that was published posthumously.[i] In Of Other Spaces, he develops the concept of “heterotopia” in contrast to utopia:

[i] Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces” (1967), trans. Jay Miskowiec, Diacritics 16, no. 1 (Spring 1986), pp. 22–27.

According to Foucault, these “other spaces” arise when society assigns one or more specific functions to a place that cannot be directly explained by or derived from its topography. If this particular task disappears, the heterotopia vanishes or adapts to the new circumstances. A central characteristic, therefore, is that these spaces can be reevaluated at will by the members of a society at any time. Heterotopias are not static entities; they turn places into mutable spaces, the understanding of which, and thus their respective meaning, only emerges from analyzing all of the contexts within which these spaces are constituted.

According to the definition, the term “atelier,” which is borrowed from the French, was used in German from the middle of the nineteenth century to refer to the workshop of an artist. Regardless of whether it was built specifically for this purpose or had once had a different function, the declaration of a space as an atelier is linked solely to artists and their intentions. Foucault’s discursive approach helps to shift this rigid focus and to consider Mack’s and Piene’s atelier at Gladbacher Strasse 69 in Düsseldorf, where the history of ZERO began, over and above the term’s definition, as a potentially multidimensional space that could equally be shaped by others, by the circle of visitors. In addition to the various use-specific aspects of the location, Mack and Piene, as active designers of the space, also show a differentiated approach to its staging, whereby, depending on the occasion, they consciously attempt to negate the topos of the atelier or use it specifically as an instrument.[i]

[i] The idea of applying Foucault‘s theory of heterotopias to the atelier comes from Eva Mongi-Vollmer, who has explored the various forms of the studio in German-speaking countries during the latter half of the nineteenth century. See Eva Mongi-Vollmer, “Das Atelier als anderer Raum: Über die diskursive Identität und Komplexität des Ateliers im 19. Jahrhundert,” KUNSTFORUM International, no. 208 (May–June 2011), pp. 92–107.

Candles, an upturned glass, open cans of paint, various bottles, cardboard boxes, a small table clock, and a multitude of other utensils lie in a jumble, piled up on top of a grand piano, which is barely recognizable as such underneath. Traces of artistic creation are found everywhere—the body of the musical instrument, which appears to have been repurposed as a workbench; the floor; the easel in the background; and all of the furniture are covered with residues of brightly colored paint. There are scraps of paper lying around, along with canisters of various sizes. And in the midst of this creative chaos, its creator, with one of his famous Grid Paintings in his hands.

A photograph from 1958 shows Piene in his studio, and is obviously arranged. Dressed in a suit and bow tie, but above all with a black grid template in front of his chest—the tool with which he began to distance himself from the habitus of gestural painting and to strive for a standardization of the surface—the cofounder of ZERO is staged at the keyboard by photographer Paul Brandenburg, literally setting the tone as the protagonist of a new conception of art. The clear, regular structure of the grid template stands in marked contrast to the disorder of the collection of articles in front of him, which he does not look at, instead gazing strictly ahead as if into the future. “ZERO is the (new) beginning” appears to be the programmatic motto of this depiction, which clearly places the studio in the service of the artist’s self-fashioning. The impression of the space conveyed, however, appears to be authentic. A comparison with a photograph of a more documentary nature by Charles Wilp (1932–2005), which shows Piene in the process of priming a canvas, draws a similar picture, and identifies the space as a modest workshop oriented toward artistic activity—an atelier, by way of definition. This is the place where the fleeting idea materializes, slowly takes shape, and finally manifests itself in a finished work of art. It is governed by its own rules, which do not demand any strict order, but are solely up to the creative process.

The atelier was located on the upper floor of a building in the rear courtyard at Gladbacher Strasse 69, in the Düsseldorf district of Bilk. The building had been partially destroyed during the Second World War, and the lower floor was occupied by a turning shop.[i] The upper floor, which was reached by a narrow and extremely steep staircase directly behind the wooden door with the white letterbox, consisted of three rooms: two to the left and one to the right of the staircase. Mack was already using the latter as a workshop, and at times also as a place to live, when the opportunity arose to take over the larger of the two rooms opposite—a ballet school that rented the premises moved out around 1955/56.[ii] Mack, Piene, and Hans Salentin (1925–2009), who had become friends during their time together at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, joined forces with the artist Hans-Joachim Bleckert (1927–1998) and the advertising photographer Charles Wilp, and rented it collectively.[iii] The room was around fifty-six square meters and had several windows on the south and west walls.[iv] The roof was of corrugated iron, which replaced the original war-damaged roof.[v]Visible steel lattice girders supported the construction and, together with the unclad brickwork, ensured that the room always had an industrial feel to it, as Mack emphasized in the statement quoted at the beginning of this contribution to underline the basic conditions at the premises.[vi] In this connection, Piene also referred to it in a similarly terse way as a “building shell.”[vii] There were no skylights, nor were there any sanitary facilities. he artists shared an outside toilet in the small garden next to the turning shop with the staff there. If the water pipes running across the courtyard froze in winter, they went to the Hafenquelle restaurant on the opposite side of the street.[viii] In 1957, Piene became sole tenant of the room, and he kept it until 1966, when ZERO ended.[ix] The adjacent smaller studio had been rented by the sculptor Kurt Link (1926–1996) before Mack officially took it over later. It also served partly to provide additional space for the Evening Exhibitions[x]—the legendary events organized by Mack and Piene that ultimately led to the founding of ZERO and to the opening up of the atelier in terms of concept and function, beyond the familiar meaning of the term as an artist’s workspace.

[i] See Otto Piene, “Wo sich nichts spiegelte als der Himmel,” in Meister 2006 (see note 1), p. 15.

[ii] See Thekla Zell, Exposition Zero: Vom Atelier in die Avantgardegalerie. Zur Konstituierung und Etablierung der Zero-Bewegung in Deutschland am Beispiel der Abendausstellungen, der Galerie Schmela, des Studio F, der Galerie Nota und der D(ato) Galerie(Vienna, 2019), p. 81.

[iii] The information about who rented which room and when is not always consistent. Piene, in Meister 2006 (see note 1), p. 15, mentions Kurt Link as well as Bleckert in connection with the rent for the large room. Zell 2019 (see note 6), p. 81, who bases her statements on the information given by Piene, does not mention Bleckert. Mack confines himself to the general statement that the “larger room had been rented by five people … and the smaller one later by Kurt Link, and then by me.” Mack, in Meister 2006 (see note 1), p. 55.

[iv] See Zell 2019 (see note 6), p. 83.

[v] See Piene, in Meister 2006 (see note 1), p. 15.

[vi] Mack, in Meister 2006 (see note 1), p. 57, even compares his small apartment “almost” to a “penal institution,” but says at the end of his reply that they “didn‘t actually see it as hardship at all.”

[vii] Piene, in Meister 2006 (see note 1), p. 17.

[viii] See ibid., p. 17.

[ix] See Otto Piene and Heinz-Norbert Jocks, “Otto Piene: Das Gold namens Licht,” in Ulrike Bleicker-Honisch and Anna Lenz, eds., Das Ohr am Tatort (Ostfildern, 2009), p. 101.

[x] See ibid, p. 101; also Mack, in Meister 2006 (see note 1), p. 55.

The same place, photographed from almost the same angle, and yet a completely different space. Nothing here is reminiscent of the mysterious atmosphere that Brandenburg’s photograph exudes, on the trail of the artist’s creative process. At the time when this photograph was taken, artistic production had come to an end for these outcomes, as the hanging paintings of different formats and content make clear. The walls look whiter. Some tidying up has been done; nothing is lying around anymore. The heap of props has given way to neatly lined-up glasses. They are as yet unused; the crate of beer bottles under the grand piano is full—obviously the vernissage has not yet begun.

This photo by Hans Salentin documents September 26, 1957, when Mack and Piene organized their 4th Evening Exhibition. Born out of a general need—there was virtually no platform for young, progressive artists to present their work to the public in the conservative Düsseldorf of the nineteen-fifties—the two artists had decided around six months earlier to take matters into their own hands and had organized their famous Evening Exhibitions.[i] At regular intervals of one to three months from April 1957 to October 1958, they opened the doors to their atelier in Gladbacher Strasse for one evening, to show the latest developments in contemporary painting to an interested audience.[ii]

The idea of converting their workshop into an exhibition space was by no means new. Asmus Carstens (1754–1798) and Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), for example, used their studios in Rome toward the end of the eighteenth century to present their works in shows organized especially for the general public.[iii]However, what had not been done before and that represented a decisive difference was artists exhibiting not only their own works but also, or even primarily, those of their colleagues. Far from commercial considerations, such as attracting an audience of potential buyers[iv] or expressing independence from established authorities like the Paris Salon in the case of Courbet or Édouard Manet (1832–1882),[v] Mack’s and Piene’s primary intention in opening up their atelier was to exhibit and to give the discourse on art a space in the truest sense of the word. Mack declared that exchanges are an existential need: “As an artist, you run the risk of becoming depressed if you paint all alone and without any echo at all. You want to know whether what you are doing will endure.”[vi] Piene formulated the same thoughts in a letter to Adolf Zillmann, from the perspective of the audience:

[i] See Dirk Pörschmann, “‘M.P.Ue.’ Dynamo for ZERO: The Artist-Curators Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, and Günther Uecker,” in Tiziana Caianiello and Mattijs Visser, eds., The Artist as Curator: Collaborative Initiatives in the International ZERO Movement 1957–1967(Ghent, 2015), p. 20.

[ii] The pragmatic reason for limiting the duration of the exhibitions was that Mack and Piene worked as teachers during the day and only had time for their own projects in the evenings. See Heinz Mack, “Am Anfang war Bach,” in Bleicker-Honisch and Lenz 2009 (see note 13), p. 52. However, a certain exclusivity that went hand in hand with the limited running time of the shows quickly became apparent, which is why the events continued to be advertised strategically as “one-evening exhibitions,” although it was soon possible to visit the exhibitions beyond the opening evening. See Zell 2019 (see note 6), p. 80; also Otto Piene to Oskar Holweck (carbon copy), July 21, 1958, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.884.

[iii] See Michael Diers, “atelier/réalité: Von der Atelierausstellung zum ausgestellten Atelier,” in Michael Diers and Monika Wagner, eds., Topos Atelier: Werkstatt und Wissensform, Hamburger Forschungen zur Kunstgeschichte, vol. 7 (Berlin, 2010), p. 3.

[iv] See Oskar Bätschmann, Ausstellungskünstler: Kult und Karriere im modernen Kunstsystem (Cologne, 1997), p. 138. Bätschmann explains this development of the open studio at the end of the nineteenth century by way of the increasing necessity of “advertising for an audience,” on which the “exhibition artists” depended.

[v] See Diers 2010 (see note 17), p. 3.

[vi] Mack, in Bleicker-Honisch and Lenz 2009 (see note 13), p. 52.

And Klaus Jürgen Fischer (1930–2017), who gave the opening speech at the 7th Evening Exhibition, also emphasized the key role of the audience, without whose response “art easily withers away in recipes, in what is risk-free, celebrity, or even in mastery.”[i] In the open atelier, all three entities—artists, artworks, and visitors—were able to come into direct contact with each other and engage in dialogue in direct confrontation with their counterparts. Another of Salentin’s photographs from the 4th Evening Exhibition shows Mack and Piene as the two organizers of the evening: dressed in suits, sitting in a half circle of chairs in front of the exhibits, they literally invite us to enter into conversation with them and illustrate the communication-oriented approach of the event in person.

[i] Klaus Jürgen Fischer, opening speech at the 7th Evening Exhibition, April 24, 1958, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.VI.27.

This was both the explicit intention of the two artists and also something that appeared to fulfill a lack on the part of the audience, as demonstrated by the considerable popularity of the Evening Exhibitions, right from the very first shows. The concept obviously captured the mood of the times, as was emphasized several times in the press, who began to report on the events after the 2nd Evening Exhibition.[i] Karl Ruhrberg (1924–2006) highlighted in the Düsseldorfer Nachrichten of May 17, 1957, the “lively discussion about the nature of young art and what it wants,”[ii] and compared these events favorably to other exhibitions, which often neglected this aspect. He also referred explicitly to a “whole lot of interested laypeople”[iii] who were present in addition to the connoisseurs and who helped to shape the discourse. In an article that appeared in the Rheinische Post newspaper, the “lively and ongoing debates” were explicitly linked to the “studio atmosphere”[iv] and even placed in direct contrast with the institution of the gallery. In the context of the Evening Exhibitions, the atelier took an intermediate position at the interface between artist, work, and public, along with the gallery and the museum, and became a kind of forum that promoted and sometimes catalyzed exchange.[v] Within just a few months, Mack and Piene had turned the lack of exhibition platforms for young art into a general place for social encounters, as a snapshot of the first event shows, in which the exhibits are barely seen due to the number of visitors.[vi] The pronounced social aspect, which, in contrast to the aforementioned predecessors in the nineteenth century, was already part of the endeavor’s intention, ran like a red thread right through to the realization of the concept. In retrospect, Mack was correct when he made the following assessment: “The whole thing was also a social occasion, an event. That’s what you would call it today. Suddenly, our atelier was more than just a space for paintings. It was a social meeting place where people came together who had never met before, which made it unique.”[vii] For the artists themselves, this opened up an ideal form of informal networking that brought them into contact with like-minded artists such as Yves Klein, as well as with gallery owners, critics, media representatives, potential collectors, and people from the museum landscape.[viii]

[i] See Zell 2019 (see note 6), p. 87.

[ii] Karl Ruhrberg, “Junge Bilder im alten Bilk: Ein Maler verleiht sein Atelier an die Kollegen,” Düsseldorfer Nachrichten, May 17, 1957.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] “Neuer Treffpunkt ‘Abendausstellungen’: Max Bense als Gast,” Rheinische Post, December 18, 1957, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.II.32.

[v] See Zell 2019 (see note 6), p. 60; also Diers 2010 (see note 17), p. 4. Both refer here to the classification of the atelier in the nineteenth century, which can indubitably be applied to the situation of Mack‘s and Piene‘s studio.

[vi] The photograph is reproduced in Anette Kuhn, ZERO: Eine Avantgarde der sechziger Jahre (Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1991), p. 14, fig. 4.

[vii] Mack, in Bleicker-Honisch and Lenz 2009 (see note 13), p. 52. Piene, in Meister 2006 (see note 1), p. 18: “The Gladbacher Strasse became a meeting place.”

[viii] Already during the first Evening Exhibitions, Mack and Piene got to know the later collectors Ilse Dwinger and the married couple Troost, for example. See Mack, in Bleicker-Honisch and Lenz 2009 (see note 13), p. 53. See also Piene, in Meister 2006 (see note 1), p. 18, who lists other well-known visitors to the Evening Exhibitions, including Rolf Wiesselmann from WDR and Clement Greenberg, the US art critic.

In addition to the implicit obligation to put in an appearance at the evening of the vernissage, it was also the state of the building that exerted a great attraction on the public. Newspaper reports repeatedly focused on the architecture of the location and its partially derelict condition, although Mack and Piene had not intended this—quite the opposite. As Piene emphasized, they tried to make their studio “as clean as possible, so that no romanticism or sentimentality about ruins could be read into it.”[i] That which, in the eyes of the visitors, primarily evoked the typical idea of the studio as a “phantasmal” site of creative acts, a visit to which promised to bring one closer to this enigma, for the artists primarily conjured up associations with the war and, with regard to art, with Tachisme, a style of abstract painting from which they gradually sought to detach themselves in their works.[ii] In order to liberate the space from the dirt and the burden of the past and produce a presentation area that was as neutral as possible both intellectually and visually, they completely cleared out the studio in the run-up to the events and whitewashed the walls, “which was necessary anyway after that Tachiste era,”[iii] said Mack, thus highlighting the unwanted connection. The interior design, reminiscent of the principle of the “white cube,” thus not only emphasized the external transformation from atelier as workshop to atelier as exhibition space, but also pursued ideological purposes—a plan that, despite the differences described, would work out in the reception of the location. In an article in the Düsseldorfer Nachrichten newspaper on October 7, 1958, a critic described the walk to the atelier as though it were a path from the dark Tachiste painting processing war experiences, as ZERO then interpreted it, to a singular pictorial language led by structure and light:[iv]

[i] Otto Piene, “Untitled,” in Wulf Herzogenrath, ed., Selbstdarstellung: Künstler über sich (Düsseldorf, 1973), p. 132.

[ii] See Heinz Mack, “Gespräch mit Heinz Mack,” in Susanne Rennert, ed., Dieter Hülsmanns und Friedolin Reske: Ateliergespräche, Düsseldorf 1966 (Cologne, 2018), p. 109: “Like most of my friends, I allowed myself to be seduced by Tachisme for a short while. Without inner conviction, I went along with what was then the newest of all art phenomena, but it led to inner tensions. The results, which depended more on chance, did not satisfy me; I suffered and was desperate.”

[iii] The whole sentence reads: “And since in the mid 1950s there was virtually no chance of exhibiting, this situation led to the decision to tidy up our ateliers, which was necessary after that Tachiste era, to whitewash the walls and hang up our new works.”Heinz Mack, “Untitled,” in Herzogenrath 1973 (see note 31), p. 106.

[iv] See Kuhn 1991 (see note 28), p. 14.

In the course of the Evening Exhibitions, the studio in Gladbacher Strasse expanded into a multiple space whose dimensions stretched beyond the conceptual definition. Yet in a certain sense the series of events was intended to hark back to the original etymological meaning of the studio as a place of artistic creation. The first Evening Exhibitions were conceived as general demonstrations of current trends in art without any specific focus of content. “It was simply about showing what we 20 to 25-year-olds were working on,”[i] as Piene summarized the idea in retrospect. The only prerequisite for collaboration with other artists was that they “were not represented by a gallery. They had to experiment and look for new things, with regard to what was available at the time.”[ii] The invitation cards, always produced with the same plain layout design, list the names of the exhibiting artists. With the exception of Johannes Geccelli (1925–2011), to whom the 5th Evening Exhibition was later dedicated as a solo show, they were in fact all working abstract artists.[iii] They mainly belonged to Gruppe 53 and based their works on the gestural style of French Art Informel, as did Mack and Piene at the time.[iv] The first turning point came with the 4th Evening Exhibition, in September 1957, in which Piene presented for the first time his new Grid Paintings, created during the summer holidays, with which he gradually began to turn away from the prevailing visual language and develop his own style.[v] The same trend can be observed with regard to the conception of this exhibition, which in the selection of artists documents a dissociation from Gruppe 53.[vi] The final paradigm shift took place with the 7th Evening Exhibition, in April 1958, which for the first time had a concrete theme: its title was Das rote Bild(The Red Painting). In the “Invitation to Participate,” Mack and Piene requested the submission of a painting of “medium size,” “whose dominant color is red.”[vii] This is the wording of the circular letter, which they sent specifically to colleagues known to them, in whose works they discerned a relationship to their own, including Günther Uecker (b. 1930) for the first time.[viii] Thus the project, which initially had just begun as an experiment, was increasingly taking on apparent characteristics of a program. These would manifest themselves in the articles on art theory in the first issue of their self-published magazine ZERO 1, which appeared parallel to the 7th Evening Exhibition, and which gave their endeavor both its name and its identity.[ix] Under the title Vibration, the 8th Evening Exhibition followed in October 1958. This further sharpened the profile because the goal of a common artistic tendency was obviously crystallizing and the event was accompanied by the publication of ZERO 2.[x] ZERO was officially born.

Retrospectively, Dirk Pörschmann aptly described the series of Evening Exhibitions as the “mythical, legendary humus of ZERO’s history.”[xi] The nucleus was the atelier, Mack’s and Piene’s workshop, which contributed decisively to the early success of the series of events and thus to the formation and establishment of ZERO, both due to its special features and orientation as a physical space and also due to the “other” spaces sketched over the real premises. The fact that “Atelier” stands at the beginning of thisABC of ZERO is obvious, for “A” comes first in an alphabetized organization of chapters, but it also makes sense in terms of content and chronology, because: in the beginning was the atelier (at Gladbacher Strasse 69).

[i] Piene, in Bleicker-Honisch and Lenz 2009 (see note 13), p. 100.

[ii] Ibid., p. 101.

[iii] See Zell 2019 (see note 6), p. 85.

[iv] See ibid, p. 85.

[v] See ibid, p. 91.

[vi] See ibid, p. 91.

[vii] Otto Piene, invitation to the 7th Evening Exhibition (concept), March 5, 1958, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.963.

[viii] See Pörschmann 2015 (see note 15), p. 29.

[ix] See Zell 2019 (see note 6), p. 85.

[x] See Zell 2019 (see note 6), p. 117. ZERO 3 was presented at the event ZERO: Edition, Exposition, Demonstration, at the Galerie Schmela in 1961. The third and final issue of the magazine contains contributions by over thirty artists from various countries, and provides an overview of the ZERO approach and mindset, which developed into an international art movement.

[xi] Pörschmann 2015 (see note 15), p. 20.

As soon as galleries included Mack’s and Piene’s works in their portfolios, the two artists ceased organizing their own Evening Exhibitions.[i] The heterotopia of an exhibition platform for progressive art in the atelier on Gladbacher Strasse had fulfilled its purpose; it became increasingly superfluous, and disappeared once more. Two years after the eighth and final event in the series, Piene organized a show titled 9th Evening Exhibition, which, despite the title suggesting a continuation of the series, has to be classified as a completely independent format, as it deviated fundamentally from the original concept. It took place in collaboration with Galerie Schmela as part of Piene’s second solo exhibition there, which was titled Piene: Ein Fest für das Licht (Piene: A Festival for the Light), and which opened on October 7, 1960, in the gallery’s premises on Hunsrückenstrasse in Düsseldorf’s old town. On three evenings, parallel to the exhibition in the gallery, Piene staged in his atelier various versions of the Lichtballett (Light Ballet) that he had been developing for about a year.[ii] The exhibition poster lists both venues, highlighting their symbiotic character, which is also reflected in the structure of the poster. The names of the venues are set at the same line height—here shown on one of Piene’s drawings of the design with the underlined exhortation “achsial!” (“axial!”) as a central and meaningful design element. They appear as equal venues at eye level, as it were, whereby the artworks on display in each case determined the meaning of the respective locations or, in the case of the atelier, even changed it decisively. While Alfred Schmela showed new Rauchbilder (Smoke Paintings) and light graphics by Piene, which are tangible and permanent works that were suitable for marketing and which confirmed the function of the gallery, the artist presented a purely ephemeral work with the various choreographies of his Light Ballet in his atelier, which could not be captured for a permanent presentation nor was eligible for sale.[iii] In particular, the first performance, of Light Ballet “mit Folien nach Jazz” (“with foils to jazz”),[iv] in which several people made the light dance in the room—and not machines, as in the third, Vollelektronisches Lichtballett (Fully Electronic Light Ballet)—was created purely for the moment and it only existed in that moment, instantly transforming the atelier into an “experimental action space.”[v]Whereas in the eight preceding Evening Exhibitions it had served the basic function of surfaces on which exhibits were displayed, here the atelier was now ennobled to the status of a kind of stage, and thus itself became part of the artwork being presented.[vi]

[i] See Zell 2019 (see note 6), p. 63.

[ii] See ibid., p. 125.

[iii] See ibid., p. 127.

[iv] Otto Piene, typescript, Düsseldorf, January 3, 1965, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.IV.58.

[v] Zell 2019 (see note 6), p. 127.

[vi] However, this only applies to the moment of the performance. It should also be borne in mind that, as a rule, Piene conceived and designed his Light Ballets to be independent of space. They could be projected anywhere—the location itself always played a subordinate role, although it is of course an inherent criterion of the work, without which the installation cannot function.

In 1966, Piene organized a Zweites Fest für das Licht (Second Festival for the Light) in collaboration with Schmela. From November 11 to December 9, the artist staged several actions, which, like the first event of the same name six years earlier, were spread across several venues. In addition to the two locations used before, Piene’s new atelier rooms at Hüttenstrasse 104—the present headquarters of the ZERO foundation—became a third location, where he presented Blackout 1 and Blackout 2 on two evenings, two interactive happenings that involved the visitors as participants in the action, which consisted of slide projections and multimedia elements.[i] On December 2, 1966, Piene staged the demonstration Die rotglühende Venus (The Red Hot Venus) in his old studio on Gladbacher Strasse, at which the location was incorporated in a performance one last time and became an event space. In the darkened studio, Piene heated with a Bunsen burner a metal sculpture of a small angel, hanging freely in the room, until the bronze began to glow red, before it slowly lost its color again after a few minutes, as it cooled.[ii] On the poster, the action is announced as the “Last Evening Exhibition,”[iii] which makes it clear that this term was used solely in the context of the atelier on Gladbacher Strasse, and that the format was specifically linked to the premises there.[iv] The extinguishing of The Red Hot Venus not only brought the series of Evening Exhibitions to a close, but the history of the studio on Gladbacher Strasse had come to an end—Piene subsequently moved to Hüttenstrasse. A week earlier, during the opening of the exhibition Zero in Bonn at the Städtische Kunstsammlungen (Municipal Art Museum) in Bonn on November 25, 1966, Mack, Piene, and Uecker had officially declared the end of their artistic collaboration, and ZERO was also over.[v]

[i] See Zell 2019 (see note 6), p. 130.

[ii] See Piene, in Meister 2006 (see note 1), pp. 30–31.

[iii] Piene: Zweites Fest für das Licht (poster), Galerie Schmela, Düsseldorf, Atelier Piene, Gladbacher Strasse 69, Düsseldorf, Atelier Piene, Hüttenstrasse 104, Düsseldorf, 1966, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.0.VII.4.

[iv] See Zell 2019 (see note 6), p. 129. Interestingly, the term “atelier” only appears on the two posters for the Fest für das Licht, that is, when it was used solely for events exhibiting works by Piene. The invitation cards for the first eight Evening Exhibitions give the address of Gladbacher Strasse 69 as the location, without any reference that this was Mack‘s and Piene‘s atelier, which again underlines the social aspect of the endeavor—that the focus should not be on them, but on the community of all the exhibiting artists.

[v] See Zell 2019 (see note 6), p. 131.