I International
by Anna-Lena Weise
New York now or never!
It is well known that the ZERO circle of friends was active internationally and was geared toward international networking from the very beginning. Heinz Mack (b. 1931), Otto Piene (1928–2014), and Günther Uecker (b. 1930) cultivated intensive contacts with the Dutch group Nul, the Italian artists associated with the magazine Azimuth, the Nouveaux Réalistes from Paris, and many other artists including Almir Mavignier (1925–2018), Jésus Rafael Soto (1923–2005), Bernard Aubertin (1934–2015), Christian Megert (b. 1936), Paul de Vree (1909–1982), and Jef Verheyen (1932–1984).
After group exhibitions had taken place all over Europe in the early nineteen-sixties, the “conquest” of America was launched in 1964. ZERO is regarded as an early artists’ association, with members from Europe and Germany that attracted a great deal of public attention in the USA in the early nineteen-sixties. The exhibition Group Zero, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, fired the starting gun.[i]
[i] See Tina Rivers Ryan, “‘Before It Blows Up’: ZERO‘s American Debut, and Its Legacy,” in Tiziana Caianiello and Mattijs Visser, eds.,The Artist as Curator: Collaborative Initiatives in the International ZERO Movement 1957–1967 (Ghent, 2015), p. 363; Anette Kuhn, ZERO: Eine Avantgarde der sechziger Jahre (Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, 1991), pp. 51–52.
In the first half of the twentieth century, the US art market was dominated by the demand for European artworks. The nineteen-twenties and nineteen-thirties in particular were defined by Old Masters and European Impressionists. Contemporary European artists, many of whom had been forced to flee their home countries as refugees following the Nazi takeover of power in 1933, also contributed to the importation of European art into the USA. The Société Anonyme, founded by Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) together with Man Ray (1890–1976) and Katherine Dreier (1877–1925) in 1920, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), founded in 1929, and the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (later the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), founded in 1939, each initially focused almost entirely on European art. In 1930, MoMA mounted the exhibition Painting in Paris, from American Collections, which evidenced American collectors’ preference for the masters of French modernism.[i]
[i] See Norman Rosenthal, “Amerikanische Kunst: Eine Sicht aus Europa,” in Christos M. Joachimides and Norman Rosenthal, eds.,Amerikanische Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert: Malerei und Plastik 1913–1993, exh. cat. Martin-Gropius-Bau and Royal Academy of Arts (London and Berlin, 1993), p. 13; Gail Stavitsky, “Museen und Sammler,” in Joachimides and Rosenthal 1993, p. 166; Thomas Kellein, “Es ist die schiere Grösse: Die Rezeption der amerikanischen Kunst in Europa,” in Joachimides and Rosenthal 1993, p. 211; Britta E. Buhlmann, “Art Is Not an Object but an Experience,” in Abstrakter Expressionismus in Amerika, exh. cat. Pfalzgalerie and Ulmer Museum (Kaiserslautern, 2001), p. 19. Symbolism, Cubism, and Fauvism were the most talked-about art movements at that time. Many American artists went to Paris, the art capital of Europe, to learn from the main proponents of these movements, while Marcel Duchamp emigrated to New York during the First World War, working there to establish an infrastructure of private collectors, gallery owners, artists, and museums.
After the war in Europe, American art entered a phase of renewal. It was at this time that Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) began to create what are now considered his masterpieces, which were classified as “Abstract Expressionism” by the art critic Clement Greenberg.[i] In 1948, the artist Barnett Newman (1905–1970) opined that artists should liberate themselves from the legend, the mystique, and all the other contrivances of Western European art.[ii]
Abstract Expressionism began to take over the field and supplant the predominant figurative painting. At the same time, rising prosperity in postwar America encouraged the emergence of an art market for contemporary domestic art, which a growing number of art dealers offered at relatively low prices. MoMA also actively promoted the visibility of American artists in their home country through its group exhibitions in 1946, 1948, 1951, and 1955. The European art trade was practically nonexistent after the war broke out, and a new center for young contemporary art emerged in New York—in the galleries of Peggy Guggenheim, Sidney Janis, Samuel Kootz, and Betty Parsons. The convergence of artists, critics, gallery owners, institutions in New York established the city both in the USA and overseas as the center of American art. As an art metropolis, New York gradually replaced Paris, which had been cut off culturally for five years due to its occupation by the Nazis from 1940.[iii] Thomas Kellein summarizes this upheaval as follows:
[i] See Rosenthal 1993 (see note 2), pp. 13–19.
[ii] See Barnett Newman, “The Sublime Is Now” (1948), in Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews, ed. John O’Neill (New York, 1990), p. 173. The Abstract Expressionists prioritized the creative act of painting over the content or theme of their works. However, it is debatable whether Newman successfully achieved this goal, considering the titles of his works.
[iii] See Lena Brüning, Die Galerie Schmela: Amerikanisch-deutscher Kunsttransfer und die Entwicklung des internationalen Kunstmarktes in den 1960er Jahren (Berlin, 2022), p. 41; Bettina Friedl, “Die amerikanische Malerei zwischen 1670 und 1980,” in Visuelle Kulturen der USA: Zur Geschichte von Malerei, Fotografie, Film, Fernsehen und Neuen Medien in Amerika (Bielefeld, 2010), p. 73; Stavitsky 1993 (see note 2), p. 167; Kellein 1993 (see note 2), p. 212; Buhlmann 2001 (see note 2), pp. 19, 21; Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1983), pp. 1, 49.
“Art was increasingly discovered, exhibited, and traded in New York for the nuclear-secured and culturally blank and abstract NATO area. After only a decade, from around 1960, the centuries-long supremacy of European painting and sculpture was finally called into question.”[i]
[i] Kellein 1993 (see note 2), p. 212.
In the postwar period, Germany faced cultural challenges due to the occupation, resulting in a return to prewar art. On the relationship between the occupying powers and art in Germany, Jill Michelle Holaday writes: “Initially, the Allies championed the ‘degenerate’ art burned by the Nazis, but not contemporary art. Expressionism came to symbolize an art appropriate for a new democracy.”[i] However, many German artists and critics disagreed with this and considered prewar Expressionism outdated.
During the growing tensions between the USA and the USSR, cultural policy gained more attention and culture was instrumentalized as a political tool:[ii]
[i] Jill Michelle Holaday, Die Gruppe ZERO. Working through Wartime Trauma, Ph.D. diss. (University of Iowa, 2018), pp. 10–11.
[ii] See Carsten Kretschmann, Zwischen Spaltung und Gemeinsamkeit: Kultur im geteilten Deutschland (Berlin, 2012), pp. 15ff, 35; Brüning 2022 (see note 6), p. 35. The Allies also set the tone in the field of culture. They sought to create new structures, to regulate them and, above all, to control them rigorously.
“Certain movements were actively promoted, while others were gradually disappearing from the public eye. Abstract art was favored in terms of cultural policy as ‘modern,’ ‘European,’ or ‘Western,’ with its supposedly non-ideological and non-political visual language, whereas figurative, narrative visual language was ascribed to the ‘East’ or ‘communism’ and increasingly suppressed in West Germany.”[i]
[i] Brüning 2022 (see note 6), pp. 35–36, 56–57.
This return to abstract painting after 1945 thus also represented a dissociation from National Socialist realism. At least in the three zones occupied by the Western Allies, there was a direct break with this era.[i]
The introduction of American fine art into Germany in the postwar period was initially slow. It was barely noticeable at all in Düsseldorf. After the unification of the US and British occupied zones in 1947, American influence spread to the Rhine-Ruhr region. The Cultural Exchange Program, which was intended to enable individual artists and creatives in the USA and Germany to visit each other’s countries, had been launched in 1946, but the absence of a market for art in Germany nevertheless spread a feeling of isolation around the art academies. Heinz Mack commented on this in a conversation with Betty van Garel:
[i] See Kretschmann 2012 (see note 9); Brüning 2022 (see note 7), p. 35.
“We in Germany—our friends in Holland must have been in the same situation—were badly informed about what was actually going on in the world. It wasn’t until 1948, 1949, that what was happening in America became known, where a man like Pollock had created his great paintings. We then had the uncomfortable feeling that something had happened there that we had missed. That there was no point any more in us creating things that had already been done over there.”[i]
[i] Quoted in Dieter Honisch, Mack: Skulpturen 1953–1986 (Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1986), p. 10.
The reception of American art in Europe took place primarily via MoMA, which had its own pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia in 1948, and became an important cooperative partner for various departments of the US government. Starting in 1952, an international touring exhibition program was set up at MoMA under the direction of Porter A. McCray, consisting of the museum’s contemporary art collection. This made the institution one of the foremost exhibition organizers in Europe in the following years.[i] After MoMA’s first touring exhibition, Twelve Contemporary American Painters and Sculptors, was shown in Paris, Zurich, Düsseldorf, Stockholm, Helsinki, and Oslo, from April 1953, it still took almost five years for American art to become one of the biggest influences on the development of the German art market. The Documenta exhibition of contemporary art, which took place for the first time in Kassel in 1955, made an important contribution to this. At Documenta 2 in 1956, an entire room was dedicated to Jackson Pollock, who had recently died.[ii]
From 1953 to 1957, the Düsseldorf ZERO artists experimented with various styles and created works that certainly exhibited Expressionist tendencies. However, like the Minimalists in America, they turned their backs on this style. The means that they used to expand their art included novel materials such as silver foil, spotlights, plexiglass, and aluminum; plus, with their Demonstrations, their art entered the experiential realm.[iii] A similar phenomenon could be observed in New York at around the same time, as Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) noted:
[i] See Brüning 2022 (see note 6), pp. 38–42; Kellein 1993 (see note 2), pp. 211ff; Werner Abelshauser, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte seit 1945 (Munich, 2004), p. 114. In the nineteen-fifties, exhibitions put on by the American Federation of Artsand the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service sought to bring American art to a wider audience at home and abroad. However, as no contemporary American art was included, the focus was not on publicizing current trends.
[ii] See Brüning 2022 (see note 6), pp. 38–42; Kellein 1993 (see note 2), pp. 211ff; Abelshauser 2004 (see note 13), p. 114.
[iii] See Holaday 2018 (see note 8), p. 13; Valerie Hillings, Experimental Artists’ Groups in Europe, 1951–1968: Abstraction, Interaction, and Internationalism, Ph.D. diss. (New York University, 2002), p. 124.
“Not satisfied with the suggestion through paint of our senses, we shall utilize the specific substances of sight, sound, movement, people, odors, food, electric and neon light, smoke, water, old socks, a dog, movies, a thousand other things which we have always had about us, but ignored, but they will disclose entirely unheard of happenings.”[i]
[i] Allan Kaprow, “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” Art News 57, no. 6 (October 1958), pp. 24–25.
The ZERO artists did use similar techniques and forms as the New York Minimalists, but their works often had a transcendental meaning.
More regarding the topic "International"
The ZERO artists Uecker, Piene, and Mack, as well as others belonging to this circle, had already been in contact individually with several institutions in America, some years before the big ZERO show took place. Robert Pincus-Witten notes that
That both Mack and Piene were interested in the American way of life is evidenced by an invitation from Louis Garinger to the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies in Austria in 1959.[i] Yves Klein (1928–1962), meanwhile, traveled to New York in 1961 for a two-month stay and to visit his first solo exhibition at the Castelli Gallery, which opened its doors on April 11, 1961. (Castelli had already presented Klein’s work in a 1959 exhibition, Works in Three Dimensions, along with works by John Chamberlain, Marisol, and Robert Rauschenberg.) At that time, it took approximately eight days to cross the Atlantic aboard a liner. In general, traveling was much more complicated, expensive and, above all, time-consuming than it is today.[ii]
[i] Louis Garinger to Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, Salzburg, December 22, 1959, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.I.1335; estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.506.
[ii] Leo Castelli had had a gallery in Manhattan since 1957, where he at first showed European and French art. However, he was quick to include American Abstract Expressionism in his program.
The exhibition received a rather negative response from the New York audience, with reviews being critical. Only three sponge sculptures were sold, and not a single monochrome. Additionally, the exhibition attracted far fewer visitors than in Europe. According to the critics, “Klein was still far from being recognized as the most influential artist to have emerged in postwar France.”[i]
In May 1961, the Dwan Gallery in Los Angeles presented the works of “Yves le Monochrome.” At the time, Klein was thinking about creating a giant Méta-matic/Anthropometry machine in collaboration with Jean Tinguely. His idea of dipping hired models in blue paint and having them leave their traces on a large white canvas was never realized.[ii]
During his first visit to the USA, Pontus Hultén, then director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, met the engineer Billy Klüver, and together they set the course for Jean Tinguely. Tinguely achieved fame in the USA with his Homage to New York of 1960. The idea for his self-destructing machine is said to have come to him in January 1960, when he was in New York for his first solo show, at the Staempfli Gallery. His Méta-maticdrawing machines were his entrée to the young New York art scene and caught the attention of Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns (b. 1930), Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008), and others. Rauschenberg contributed his first kinetic object to the Homage, titled Money Thrower for Tinguely’s H.T.N.Y.—a toaster that released silver dollars, spewing them into the audience.[iii]
Alongside Tinguely, his close friend Daniel Spoerri (b. 1930) was also represented in the 1961 exhibition The Art of Assemblage at MoMA, the museum purchasing his work Kichkas Frühstück (Kichka’s Breakfast), in 1960.
[i] Klein-Moquay and Pincus-Witten 2009 (see note 17), p. 35.
[ii] See Klein-Moquay and Pincus-Witten 2009 (see note 17), pp. 44ff.
[iii] See “Autodestruktive Aktionen,” in Jean Tinguely: Super Meta Maxi, exh. cat. Museum Kunstpalast and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (Düsseldorf and Cologne, 2016), pp. 70ff; Roland Wetzel, preface and introduction to Robert Rauschenberg—Jean Tinguely: Collaborations, exh. cat. Museum Tinguely (Basel, 2009), p. 7; Kellein 1993 (see note 2), p. 217.
Hans Haacke (b. 1936) was one of the first in the ZERO circle to live in America for a longer period of time—from 1961 to 1963. He moved to the USA in 1961 on a Fulbright scholarship and enrolled as a scholarship holder at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia, in 1962. On September 8, 1962, he wrote to Otto Piene from Philadelphia, informing him that he would be going to New York the following week. He then enrolled at the Pratt Graphic Art Center, where he remained until 1963. Despite taking a dim view of America as a consumer society—where “everything is offered for sale and consumed: goods, opinions, mass manipulation, religion, racial hatred, everything”—and predicting the arrival of the “American way of life” in Germany, he nevertheless appreciated his stay,[i] and, in a letter of March 21, 1963, he even considered extending his stay in New York for another year, describing it as an “outrageously fascinating city.”[ii]
Although Haacke rejected the GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel), founded in Paris in 1960 to focus on perceptual phenomena in art, he acknowledged that “their exhibition in NY was good,”[iii] since Pop Art was otherwise predominant in every gallery.[iv] Thus Haacke missed the challenge of colleagues who worked in the same manner as ZERO. In view of the fact that Pop Art, with its bright colors and large dimensions, clearly set itself apart from ZERO’s art, Haacke’s temporary embrace of GRAV seems only logical. On September 1, 1963, he decided to return to Germany.[v] However, he did not stay in Cologne very long, and returned to the United States permanently in 1965.
[i] Hans Haacke to Otto Piene, New York, March 21, 1963, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.1345.
[ii] Hans Haacke to Otto Piene, Philadelphia, September 8, 1962, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.1344.
[iii] Hans Haacke to Otto Piene, Philadelphia, September 8, 1962, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.1344.
[iv] The nineteen-sixties is considered the decade in which Pop Art established itself in the art market and institutions, and spread throughout Europe. Pop Art, which predominantly focused on consumption, was advantaged by John F. Kennedy’s economic policy, which was based on the idea that the stability of the economy could be maintained by stimulating each and every individual to engage in consumption. See Brüning 2022 (see note 6), pp. 163–64; Willi Paul Adams, Die USA im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2008), pp. 83–84.
[v] See Hans Haacke to Otto Piene, Hempstead, New York, July 18, 1963, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.1869.
Günther Uecker, Otto Piene, and Heinz Mack were also represented in US exhibitions before 1964. In fact, Hermann Warner Williams, the director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, had already contacted Otto Piene as early as February 1962, as he had been commissioned to select artworks for the International Exhibition of Modern Art, supported by the Federal Republic of Germany.[i]
[i] See Hermann Warner Williams to Otto Piene, Washington, DC, February 27, 1962, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.695.
This exhibition, titled Sixteen German Artists (announced as Fifteen German Artists by Warner Williams), was displayed at several US institutions from 1962 to 1963.[i] Piene was represented with five artworks: Smoke Painting, Red (1961); Wave of Darkness (1961); Smoke Painting #1 (1962); Smoke Painting #2 (1962); and Light Ballet (1962).[ii] In the exhibition catalog the Smoke Paintings were titled Pulse, Pulse, Impulse (1961); Fire Flower (1962); and Sun Result (1962). Piene’s Light Ballet suffered damage on more than one occasion, first in the Corcoran Gallery and later in the Addison Gallery of American Art at the Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts.[iii]
[i] See exh. cat. Sixteen German Artists, 1962, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.VII.254.
[ii] See Hermann Warner Williams to Otto Piene, Washington, DC, July 20, 1962, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.697.
[iii] “The Exhibition is presently at Andover, and I would be grateful if you could send replacements for the two parts AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.” Donelson F. Hoopes to Otto Piene, Washington, DC, March 7, 1963, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.1352.
Heinz Mack was also involved in this exhibition, as evidenced by a letter from the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Washington, DC, in December 1962, thanking him for participating. The exhibition catalog lists five of his works, all of which were lent by Galerie Schmela: Dynamic Structure in White (1960); White Oval (1960); Dynamic Structure in White on Black (1961); Light Relief (1961–62); and Dynamic Structure in Black (1962).[i]
Both Mack and Piene were awarded prizes at the fourth Guggenheim International Award Exhibition in 1964, which was funded by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The traveling exhibition showcased the work of artists from all over the world; however, the number of artists from each country was restricted to five.[ii]
[i] See Dr. Hanns-Erich Haack to Heinz Mack, Washington, D.C., December 6, 1962, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.94.
[ii] The Guggenheim International Award (GIA) was established in 1956 and held every two years, with the exhibition traveling to two further American cities.
The museum’s curator, Lawrence Alloway, was a close observer of the European art scene. For the exhibition, he chose Piene’s Pink Fire Flower (1963),[i] and Heinz Mack’s, Cardiogram of the Cyclops (1961–62) after visiting Düsseldorf in August 1963 for the examination of Piene’s work.[ii] In addition, in late 1963 the Dalzell Hatfield Gallery expressed interest in Heinz Mack’s sculpture Teller-Object (Plate Object), and offered him an exhibition platform, while Piene was selected by Alloway for a second exhibition at the Guggenheim in the same year.[iii]
A work by Uecker in the collection of the American artist George Rickey was shown in the group exhibition On the Move: Kinetic Sculptures (1964) at the Howard Wise Gallery. In the following year, Uecker was represented in eight group exhibitions in America. Among other presentations, his works were featured as part of the Rickey Collection at the Albany Institute of History and Art, New York, at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin—which presented An Exhibition of Retinal and Perceptual Art—and in the exhibition Quantum 1 at the Sachs Galleries, New York.[iv]
Piero Dorazio (1927–2005), who belonged to the extended ZERO circle, was at that time teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. He had already spent a year in America in 1953, and took up a teaching position at Penn in 1959. On an undated postcard, he informed Piene that he had suggested him for a semester’s stay at the university.
[i] See Hillings 2002 (see note 15), p. 220; Lawrence Alloway to Otto Piene, New York, August 8, 1963, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.1949_2.
[ii] See Lawrence Alloway to Otto Piene, New York, August 21, 1963, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.1950_2.
[iii] See D. Hatfield to Heinz Mack, Los Angeles, November 20, 1963, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.157. In the event, the exhibition at the Guggenheim was postponed, or rather split into two parts: a show of American graphic art followed by a show of works by European artists. See Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to Otto Piene, New York, April 9, 1964, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.1954.
[iv] See Hillings 2002 (see note 15), p. 220.
A letter from the university dated March 5, 1964, indicates that the institution had already tried to engage Piene as a guest lecturer for the 1963 fall/winter semester.[i] Unfortunately, he had had to decline due to lack of time:
[i] See Piero Dorazio to Otto Piene, Philadelphia, undated, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.1471; Thomas B. A. Godfrey, Philadelphia, June 20, 1963, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.1977_2.
“Last year we wrote you, too late I am afraid to enable you to make plans for a visit to Philadelphia in the Fall of 1963. We were very disappointed that you were unable to come, and I am again writing in the hope that we may interest you in spending one term with us as Visiting Critic in Painting […].”[i]
[i] George Holmes Perkins to Otto Piene, Philadelphia, March 5, 1964, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.2388. See also the letter from the University of July 19, 1963, in which Thomas B. A. Godfrey expresses his disappointment over Piene’s cancellation, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.1973_2; and the draft of Piene’s letter of cancellation, citing a lack of time to prepare, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.1975_1.
During Piene’s time in Philadelphia, Mack was invited to the university for a day to present his Sahara Project: “I understand from Otto that you will be in this country during the month of November and if you are in New York and can visit us at the School for a day, we should be happy.”[i]
[i] Thomas B. A. Godfrey to Heinz Mack, Philadelphia, October 1, 1964, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.I.965; Heinz Mack to Thomas B. A. Godfrey, October 17, 1964, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.I.966.
By this point in time, ZERO had arrived in America. Almost at the same time as the exhibition in Pennsylvania, gallery owner Howard Wise presented the first exhibition of the triumvirate Mack, Piene, and Uecker in his New York space.[i] Heinz Mack’s pronouncement, “New York now or never!,”[ii] proved to be true. Philadelphia was followed by a new phase for some of the artists, in which they enjoyed far greater participation in exhibitions in the USA. Up to this point, German postwar art had gone relatively unnoticed in America. In Valerie Hillings’s opinion, “the interest in the show by the press marked a shift in American attitudes towards German art.”[iii]
[i] See Thekla Zell, “The ZERO Traveling Circus: Documentation of Exhibitions, Actions, Publications 1958–1966,” in Dirk Pörschmann and Margriet Schavemaker, eds., ZERO: Die internationale Kunstbewegung der 50er und 60er Jahre (ZERO: The International Art Movement of the 1950s and 1960s), exh. cat. Martin-Gropius-Bau and Stedelijk Museum (Berlin, Amsterdam, and Cologne, 2015), p. 132.
[ii] See Stachelhaus 1993 (as in note 1) p. 160.
[iii] For further information about ZERO and the USA, see Rivers Ryan 2015 (see note 1); Kuhn 1991 (see note 1), pp. 51–52; Hillings 2002 (see note 15), p. 223.
This text has been translated from German into English by Gloria Custance.
