This publication, Opening the Archive: The ABCs of ZERO, brings together all the possible options for art historiography after the end of art history. Presented in the form of an alphabet, it is an account of the avant-garde that emerged in Europe after the Second World War that was summed up under the name “ZERO” or “Zero.” The archive of the ZERO foundation in Düsseldorf is both the starting point and the focus. The documents and material that Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, and Günther Uecker handed over to the foundation in 2008 represent a body of knowledge that has since been expanded through interviews and oral histories, and through the accession of further archives—such as that of William E. Simmat—as well as film and photo documentation, for example, by filmmaker Werner Raeune.

The terms selected for inclusion in the book are paradigmatic for ZERO art and the ZERO movement. They originate from a thematically limited, yet open and free reservoir, which is only reduced by the fact that a selected term, and thus a particular letter, limits the number of possibilities in another field. So instead of “Music,” one could have chosen “Monochrome,” or instead of “Women,” “White.”

The form of the essays varies, as does their respective focus. It has been important to break away from the constraints of the historiography of art history, since ZERO, performance, and music have become part of the canon of media utilized by visual artists, and artists have developed along similar conceptual lines that suggest the drawing of comparisons.

The texts differ not only in that each author has his or her own individual approach, but also in the functionality of the ABCs of ZERO presented to the reader. Shorter essays that tell an entertaining anecdote are juxtaposed with longer theoretical discussions that require a higher level of concentration. Whether you read the book from beginning to end or browse here and there is up to you.

Jürgen Wilhelm describes the historical starting point and development of the ZERO avant-garde in his introduction. As opportunities for young artists to exhibit their work were limited in the nineteen-fifties, Heinz Mack and Otto Piene began to organize the so-called Evening Exhibitions in their own studio, and founded under the name “ZERO” what is now an integral part of art today. Ann-Kathrin Illmann takes a look back at the place where ZERO was born: the “Atelier” in the rear building at Gladbacher Strasse 69 in Düsseldorf.

Mack and Piene’s historic achievement back then was twofold. First, they founded the studio exhibitions, and second, they published three magazines, the first of which coincided with the 7th Evening Exhibition. In this way, they ensured that their activities were documented and visible to the media. Bartomeu Marí examines the significance of the “Books” for the ZERO movement.

A work by Eugen Gomringer (b. 1935), an important concrete poet (“Concrete Poetry”) and a close friend of Günther Uecker, is reprinted in the ABCs of ZERO. This both underlines the importance of this art movement for ZERO, and also highlights the fact that work in the archive is always work on the archive as well.

Astrit Schmidt-Burkhardt analyzes the “Diagram”—actually, several of them—that Heinz Mack created in the early nineteen-seventies. “The fictitious genealogies that modern artists dreamed of are treacherous,” warned Hans Belting, but Schmidt-Burkhardt elegantly clarifies the boundary between attribution and setting.

While the incumbent Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967)[i] of the CDU had posters put up for the 1957 elections to the Bundestag that proclaimed “No experiments” in large letters, the artists in the ZERO circle were doing everything they could to bring about a renewal of art by experimenting even more. In their article, Regina Wyrwoll and Andreas Joh. Wiesand discuss the important role played by experimentation (“Experiment”) in the art of the postwar avant-garde.

The mindset of the generation born in the years 1925 to 1935 was critical: many had spent their childhood under the Fascist Nazi regime; thus it is hardly surprising that they questioned everything, not only politics and ideology, but also art. Their critique was not confined to the contents and motifs of artworks, but included the tools, materials, and media that artists could work with. In this respect they achieved a remarkable breakthrough with their use of fire. Although from 1939, when the Second World War began, entire cities in Germany and elsewhere were set on fire, after 1955 many of the ZERO protagonists created a new art with Prometheus’s element. The development and works of “Fire” art are presented by Sophia Sotke.

Nadine Oberste-Hetbleck traces the history of Galerie Schoeller (“Gallery”), a programmatic gallery in Düsseldorf that specialized in ZERO and Concrete Art, and where one or the other artwork may have been exhibited as a “Homage” to artist friends.

In the nineteen-fifties and nineteen-sixties it was very important for artists to work “internationally” (“International”). In 1952, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands founded the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which at the same time defined the geographical locations that would become pivotal for the development of ZERO art. A loose network of artists, critics, and thinkers based in Amsterdam, Brussels, Milan, Paris, and Düsseldorf grew up, who in their letters arranged to meet, planned exhibitions and publications, or just sent each other holiday postcards—at that time telephones were connected by underground cables and not every household had a connection. Rebecca Welkens sketches this network in her article “Join.”

As early as 1956, the sculptor George Rickey (1907–2002) published an essay on “Kinetic Sculptures” in the journal Art and Artist,[ii] which the Düsseldorf ZERO artists probably did not know about.[iii] They came into contact with motorized art through Jean Tinguely (1925–1991), a Swiss artist living in Paris. Anna-Lena Weise explores how “Kinetics” influenced ZERO.

Whether in the form of fire, flashlights, or powerful spotlights, “Light” played a seminal role for the ZERO artists: metaphorically, allegorically, as an immaterial material, or as a starting point (zero point) for a system of signs and, as Marco Meneguzzo explains, an extension of space.

It was not only the visual arts and literature that developed from a zero point after 1950; “Music” was also looking for a new beginning. In his essay, Rudolf Frisius examines the idea of a new start in music. Romina Dümler investigates the concept of “Nature” in the various artistic concepts developed for the planned ZERO festival at the Dutch port of Scheveningen.

The zero stood for a new departure and a beginning, but it was also a graphic symbol and a metaphor. Anna-Lena Weise has given much thought to this. And Rebecca Welkens has analyzed the large number of posters and announcements in the archive, and tells the story of their design and how they were created (“Poster”).

Leonard Merkes has compiled an audio piece of original “Quotes” by the ZERO protagonists and has created a work of literature from the words found in the archive. “Red” represents the few colors or non-colors from which the ZERO artists created their monochromes, which were typical of this time. Matthieu Poirier traces how the two-dimensional developed into the three-dimensional monochrome. Just as the monochrome panel painting is firmly linked with the name of Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935), Russian-Polish Constructivism and Unism are constitutive for the foundations of ZERO art. Iwona Dorota Bigos uncovers the underlying “Structure” in her essay.

As described above, Hans Belting recognized that the end of the artwork meant the end of art history. Pars pro toto, he names Yves Klein, who transformed “the act of creation into a theater,” “in which this act itself becomes a work: a work of ‘performance.’”[iv] Over and above the performative character typical of ZERO artworks such as Piene’s %%%Lichtballett%%% (Light Ballet), Heinz Mack’s Rotors, or Günther Uecker’s Sandmühle (Sandmill), the artists worked closely with the theater and designed stage sets as early as the nineteen-sixties. Barbara Büscher explores the relationship between ZERO art and the “Theater.”

Mention is often made of “Utopia” in the literature on ZERO, but were the dreams of art in the desert or in the sky really utopian? I ask myself. To sum up in the words of Harald Jähner: “Forgetting was the utopia of the hour.”[v]

With kinetics and movement, something found its way into art that had previously only been associated with the profane world of the industrial age, namely electricity. In their article “Volt,” Romina Dümler and Rebecca Welkens describe how restorers today take care of the early mechanically powered works of art.

My article “Women” focuses on the female ZERO artists; and yes, although clearly outnumbered by the men, they did exist.

The “X” not only has a special position in the alphabet because it unites only a few terms in its set; it also forms a bridge to mathematics, both as the Roman numeral for the Arabic number ten, and also as a symbol for multiplication. This play with meanings prompted the title of a documentary film about the ZERO movement, 0 x 0 = Art, the meaning of which I briefly outline. The final letters of the ABC resemble mountain peaks; from up there, everything that has gone before looks easy. Although none of the terms from “A” to “X” are dedicated to a single artist, I had to make an exception for the “Y”, because no word beginning with a “Y” fits ZERO as well as “Yves.” Many detailed monographs devoted to Yves Klein (1928–1962) have been published, so “Y” presents just a brief history of the French artist, reconstructed from letters in the archive.

Finally, the “Z” for “ZERO” attempts to answer the question that runs subliminally throughout the entire publication: What is ZERO?

During a symposium in September 2023, the ABC authors and others interested in ZERO met to clarify what this elastic, ambiguous, multilayered, polymorphic name “ZERO” means, by way of lectures that have been incorporated into this book as contributions. Read my summary to find out whether we were able to answer the question. Or start reading the ABCs of ZERO at “Z” for “ZERO”. Or else explore the terrain beginning from any chapter heading you like.

[i] Konrad Adenauer was the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, founded in 1949, from 1949 to 1963. He was a member of the Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU), which he cofounded after the war, and of which he was leader from 1950 to 1966.

[ii] See https://www.georgerickey.org/resources/bibliography (accessed March 9, 2024).

[iii] At any rate, there are no references to it in the archive.

[iv] Belting 1983 (see note 13), p. 163.

[v] Harald Jähner, Wolfszeit: Deutschland und die Deutschen 1945–1955 (Berlin, 2019), p. 27.

Friedrich Kittler (1943–2011) anchored German media history and theory in his 1985 study Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900 (appearing in English in 1990 as Discourse Networks 1800/1900), in which he analyzes the condition of media and their use in literature and shows how “the mother’s mouth” changed “learning to read around 1800”—namely, from learning by heart to comprehending. “The word embedded in a sentence easily allows paraphrases that translate according to the spirit and not the letter.”[i] For “‘In the beginning’ was, not the Act, but the ABC book,” writes Kittler.[ii] These words close many of the circles opened up here: that of art and its permanent reactivation through the archive; that of women and men, inventors and researchers; that of the legitimization of this book, which is not the only ABC book, but the only one about a “group of artists” who called themselves ZERO.

[i] Friedrich Kittler, Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900, 4th ed. (1985; Munich, 2003), p. 38; English edition: Discourse Networks 1800/1900, trans. Michael Metteer, with Chris Cullens (Stanford, CA, 1990), p. 28-29.

[ii] Kittler 1990 (see note 27), p. 28.

I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to this publication: the sponsors, the authors (whose biographies can be found in the appendix), the collaborators, the graphic designers, the image copyright holders, the publisher, and the readers!

This text has been translated from German into English by Gloria Custance.