P Poster

The ZERO foundation archive holds around 200 posters, of which a smaller group of seventy-five posters can be described as the core collection. These were created during the ZERO period between 1957/58 and 1967, and most were designed by either Heinz Mack (b. 1931), Otto Piene (1928–2014), or Günther Uecker (b. 1930).[i] As a practical medium of communication and a means to impart information, the posters displayed in public spaces built a bridge between the artists and the public. Together with invitation cards and exhibition catalogs, whose designs often matched, the posters were part of the multimedia apparatus that at that time was an indispensable component of every exhibition—in large institutions as well as in smaller galleries. Because they were produced by the artists themselves, most posters have the character of artworks, which means that they can be considered as an interface between fine art and commercial art.

This essay examines the role of posters within the ZERO movement, and particularly the special features of the group of ZERO posters, as well as the processes and procedures involved in their production. In addition to the designers, it explores other actors involved in these processes, in particular printers and gallery owners, and how the posters were used. With the help of documents in the ZERO foundation archive in Düsseldorf, it is possible to almost completely reconstruct processes, transactions, prices, and phases of artistic discovery, not only providing insight into the everyday life of the artists and their work, but also shedding light on ZERO’s self-image.

[i] In the late nineteen-fifties, Heinz Mack and Otto Piene occasionally worked as graphic designers; Günther Uecker had trained as a painter and advertising designer. See Heiner Stachelhaus, ZERO: Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, Günther Uecker (Düsseldorf, 1993), pp. 217, 229.

Exhibition posters have been an essential part of art exhibitions ever since these events began to be organized on a regular basis. At first, the majority of posters only contained text. As a large proportion of the population could not read until the beginning of the nineteenth century, until then announcements were read out in public. However, as the proportion of the illiterate population gradually decreased, exhibitions began to be announced mainly on the free-standing cylindrical advertising columns invented by Ernst Litfass (1816–1874), as was the practice in England and France.[i] The first posters that bore artistic designs, and which then replaced the text posters, began to appear in France from the eighteen-seventies onwards.[ii] Around 1900, the ornamental and allegorical figurative design elements of the exhibition poster established in France were also taken up in Germany.[iii] For the first time, posters came to be regarded as collector’s items. Museums responded by setting up poster collections, while writings began to appear on the subject of posters.[iv]

[i] We Want You! Von den Anfängen des Plakats bis heute, exh. cat. Museum Folkwang, Essen (Göttingen, 2022), p. 14.

[ii] Jürgen Döring, ed., Künstlerplakate: Picasso, Warhol, Beuys, exh. cat. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (Berlin, 1998), p. 6.

[iii] Anja Ebert, ed., Ausstellungsplakate 1882–1932: Die Nürnberger Plakatsammlung im Germanischen Nationalmuseum, exh. cat. Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Nuremberg, 2013), p. 5.

[iv] Ibid., pp. 6–7.

The evolution of the exhibition poster is closely linked to developments in mechanical printing processes like offset printing at the beginning of the twentieth century, which played a special role in the constantly growing advertising industry. The development of commercial art as an independent profession, providing and organizing visual information to advertise products, was also an essential factor.[i]

[i] Ibid., pp. 12–13.

Product advertising and artistic aspirations are not compatible per se, but these interests did overlap in the institution of the Bauhaus, which was founded in 1919.[i] This resulted in numerous innovations in the fields of art and commercial art, particularly in the area of typography.[ii] For example, Paul Renner (1878–1956) developed the Futura typeface in Frankfurt am Main in 1927, which was a simple, sans serif typeface that eliminated nonessentials.[iii] After World War II, the reduced formal language pioneered by the Bauhaus was taken up by the ZERO artists for the design of their posters. Together with the Helvetica typeface, which was created around 1957, Futura became a favorite of the ZERO artists for this purpose.

[i] Ibid., p. 12.

[ii] Ibid., p. 12.

[iii] Anita Kühnel, “Werbegrafik in Deutschland seit 1945,” in Anita Kühnel, ed., Schrift. Bild. Zeichen. Werbegrafik in Deutschland 1945–2015 (Dortmund, 2016), p. 60.

In terms of design, the ZERO posters are heterogeneous. In general, similarities in size, color, and design are found among posters created for series of exhibitions, such as Piene’s Fest für das Licht (Festival of Light), or touring exhibitions, such as ZERO avantgarde 1965. The signature “ZERO,” as well as the “0,” only grew to be essential elements of the posters over time; “0” and “ZERO,” respectively, aimed to foster public perception of ZERO as a group, a movement, a unit, and/or an artists’ association. Their inclusion in the poster designs was relatively late, which is surprising considering that the signature lettering “ZERO” had already been used for the magazine ZERO 1 in 1958. In the following, we shall therefore take a look at the development of the posters over time, pinpointing the moment at which “ZERO” appeared on the posters as a synonym for the group.

One of the very first posters for a ZERO show was for the Dynamo 1 exhibition, which took place in August 1959 at Renate Boukes Gallery in Wiesbaden. It was probably designed by Otto Piene, as a sketch in his estate suggests.[i]

[i] Design sketch for Dynamo 1, undated (ca. 1959), archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.IV.99.

The names Bury, Holweck, Mack, Mavignier, Oehm, Piene, Rot, Soto, Spoerri, Tinguely, and Yves appear below a large number “1,” each prefixed by “Dynamo.”[i] In an interview in 2009, Piene stated that the Wiesbaden exhibition represented the extended ZERO group. Only after this, he recalled, did he and Mack use the name “ZERO” as a title for group activities and in preparations for the ZERO 3 magazine.[ii] Be that as it may, they had in fact already used the lettering in 1958 for the magazines ZERO 1 and ZERO 2.

[i] Tiziana Caianiello, “Ein ‘Klamauk’ mit weitreichenden Folgen: Die feierliche Präsentation von ZERO 3,” in Dirk Pörschmann and Mattijs Visser, eds., ZERO 4321 (Düsseldorf, 2012), pp. 511–26.

[ii] 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. 33.

The signature lettering also appeared on the poster announcing the ZERO: Edition, Exposition, Demonstrationevent, which took place in 1961 inside and in front of the Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf, and at which the third and last ZERO magazine was presented.[i] Featuring quotations in various languages taken from the ZERO 3magazine, the poster was initially produced as a collage.

[i] Dirk Pörschmann, Evakuierung des Chaos: ZERO zwischen Sprachbildern der Reinheit und Bildsprachen der Ordnung (Cologne, 2018), p. 15.

In addition to the word “ZERO” in the upper quarter of the 84 x 58.5 cm poster, the names of the artists who were involved in ZERO 3 appear in different sizes, with the names of Piene, Mack, Fontana, Mavignier, and Arman in larger type than those of Uecker and Tinguely, while the font size of Ira Moldow’s name is only slightly larger than that of some of the quotations. The poster does not give either the location or the date and time of the event. In photographs taken at the evening presentation event on July 5, 1961, the poster can be seen in the exhibition space, positioned between the artworks, and also in between excerpts of pages taken from ZERO 3, as well as alongside the magazine itself. Presumably, the poster was not produced to announce the event to the public, but rather to proclaim the appearance of ZERO 3 inside the Galerie Schmela, thus reinforcing the overall spatial concept of the evening, with its collage-like combination of different media and artists’ contributions.[i]

[i] Ibid., p. 39.

The next occurrence, however, was not until 1963, on the poster for the Galerie Diogenes exhibition, for which the ZERO manifesto was written, and at which it was distributed. “ZERO” was also the title used for the show in Gelsenkirchen that year, which Otto Piene organized together with Ferdinand Spindel (1913–1980).[i] This was followed by numerous international exhibitions titled “ZERO,” for which posters were also designed, as in The Hague and London, and especially for the touring show ZERO avantgarde 1965, which was curated by Nanda Vigo (1936–2020) in 1965/66, and which sought to publicize ZERO art in Italy.

[i] Thekla Zell, “Chronologie,” in Caianiello and Visser 2015 (see note 12), p. 470.

In the exhibitions that were advertised under the title “ZERO,” this only rarely signified that Mack, Piene, and Uecker were the sole artists participating. In most cases, these exhibitions were larger group shows for which a variety of international artists were recruited. One of the first exhibitions advertised under the name “Group ZERO” in which only Mack, Piene, and Uecker took part was the London exhibition at McRoberts & Tunnard Gallery in 1964, which then moved on to the Howard Wise Gallery in New York a few months later, bearing the same name.

In addition to the signature lettering “ZERO,” from 1961 onwards the numeral “0” was also used synonymously, or else juxtaposed in the design. The numeral is, for example, the primary design element of the exhibition poster designed by Francesco Lo Savio (1935–1963) for the exhibition Mack + Klein + Piene + Uecker + Lo Savio = 0, held at the Galleria La Salita, Rome, in 1961. Here, the names of the five participating artists are written vertically and are reminiscent of the design of the Dynamo 1 poster for the Renate Boukes Gallery. Read horizontally, the rows of letters do not make any sense, but each row ends with “= 0.”

Another striking example of the “0” as a design element is the poster for the Nul exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1962. Several posters were produced for this group exhibition, in which Mack, Piene, and Uecker also participated. These included a typographic collage with excerpts from various manifestos, the reverse of which featured a compilation of photographs of works by the participating artists.[i] The poster was folded and put in an envelope to be handed out as an accompanying brochure at the exhibition. For the advertisements in public spaces, this compilation of images of the works was used as a template, on which a large black “0” was superimposed. Information about the exhibition was added at the top and bottom, resulting in a simple and impressive design. Like the signature ZERO lettering, the numeral also featured on the poster for the final exhibition of Mack, Piene, and Uecker, in Bonn, but was otherwise also used as a design element for larger group exhibitions, often in connection with the Dutch Nul group.

[i] Johan Pas, “The Magazine Is the Message: ZERO im Zine-Netzwerk der Neo-Avantgarde 1958–1963,” in Pörschmann and Visser 2012 (see note 11), p. 482.

Mack, Piene, and Uecker designed many of the exhibition posters themselves, as was common practice at the time. Before Uecker joined the group, Mack and Piene took turns to create the designs, which was probably due to the fact that both artists enjoyed designing posters, as well as for the practical reason that it saved time. For example, with regard to the poster design for the exhibition Integratie 64 at the Arena-Centrum Deurne, Antwerp, in 1964, Mack wrote to Paul de Vree (1909–1982):

The correspondence shows, for example, that the museum director Udo Kultermann (1927–2013) requested both Piene and Mack to provide poster designs for group exhibitions. In April 1960, he asked Piene to design the poster for the exhibition Monochrome Malerei (Monochrome Painting) in Leverkusen, for which Piene charged a fee of DM 350. Two years later, Kultermann offered Mack a commission to design a poster for the group exhibition Konstruktivisten (Constructivists) in Leverkusen. In the estimate he provided to Kultermann, Mack named a fee of DM 500, which, compared to the average salary in 1960, was very generous remuneration.[i]

However, charging a fee for designing posters was not common practice. Correspondence between gallerists and artists frequently concerned detailed breakdowns of costs for advertising and transportation. For example, on February 4, 1960, with regard to the exhibition Piene: Oil Paintings, Smoke Drawings, Light Models, and Light Ballet, at Galerie Diogenes in Berlin, Piene noted on the back of a cost estimate from the printing firm Knoche that he had spoken to the gallery owner, Günter Meisner (1926–1994), on the phone. Meisner had assured Piene that he would pay for the catalogs and invitation cards, and Piene had told him he would pay for the posters.[ii] Determining who would pay for what printed matter was a matter of negotiation, as illustrated by the correspondence in 1962 with Ursula Ludwig, who worked at Galerie Diogenes. In November that year, after Piene had sought to pass on the costs for posters and invitations to Galerie Diogenes for the exhibition Zero, which was scheduled to take place in Berlin from March 30 to April 30, 1963, Ludwig wrote:

[i] The average monthly wage for employees in 1960 was DM 508.42. See “Sozialgesetzbuch (SGB) Sechstes Buch (VI) – Gesetzliche Rentenversicherung – (Artikel 1 des Gesetzes v. 18. Dezember 1989, BGBl. I S. 2261, 1990 I S. 1337), Anlage 1 Durchschnittsentgelt in Euro/DM/RM,” Gesetze im Internet (website), https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/sgb_6/anlage_1.html (accessed December 14, 2023).

[ii] The printing firm of Knoche to Otto Piene, February 3, 1960, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.264.

She then awaited Piene’s response. Apparently an agreement was reached, because the poster, the invitations, and the catalog were available at the exhibition in the spring of 1963. Galerie St. Stephan in Vienna told Piene that they would cover the printing costs for the poster up to DM 300; anything in excess of that amount he would have to pay himself. However, they did also pay half of the transportation costs.[i]

[i] Galerie St. Stephan to Otto Piene, December 11, 1960, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO. 2.I.44.

The budget for printed matter for an exhibition was always tight and, as can be seen from the numerous letters to and from galleries and institutions, they were rigorously negotiated. If Piene and Mack designed the posters themselves, the galleries or institutions saved the costs for graphic designers, and at the same time ensured that the posters matched the artists’ own wishes. Such deals also benefitted the artists, as the art institutions covered the costs of transportation and other printed matter in return.

In terms of time management, the archive materials show that the designs were generally produced to very tight deadlines. Correspondences reveal that the time frame for executing the designs and delivering them to the printers was usually only one week, which did not leave much time to prepare and print the advertising material, either for the institutions or the artists. Notwithstanding, the finished posters had to be delivered to the galleries and institutions as fast as possible in order to advertise the exhibitions in good time. This process, which always resulted in time pressure, late submissions, and the habitually late display of the posters, appears to have been repeated from exhibition to exhibition, as can be seen from the dates of the letters. For example, in his letter to Udo Kultermann dated June 8, 1962, regarding the design for the poster for the Constructivist exhibition in Leverkusen, Mack urged Kultermann to make a quick decision about his design because he needed time for his “special poster idea.”[i] However, Mack did not receive official written confirmation before June 15. As the exhibition was scheduled to open on June 22, this gave Mack only a week to come up with the design, which he did, as can be seen from the invoice.[ii] However, this was not always the case, as a letter from Paul de Vree to Mack demonstrates. Although the exhibition Integratie 64was not due to open until September 26, 1964, de Vree sent Mack a letter on August 7 stating that Mack was too late. He pointed out that it was already the beginning of August and that they urgently needed to start advertising the exhibition, for which the poster was absolutely essential.[iii] The urgency and the speed with which posters were required obviously had a lot to do with the scale of the exhibition and the institution organizing it, because advertising entailed pasting the posters on cylindrical advertising columns—common pieces of street furniture in Germany—sending posters to important institutions for them to put on display, and distributing posters to friends and acquaintances. This often only happened after the exhibition had opened—the result of the perennial problem of time management.[iv]

[i] Heinz Mack to the Städtisches Museum Leverkusen Schloss Morsbroich, June 8, 1962, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.I.1398.

[ii] Correspondence between Heinz Mack and the Städtisches Museum Leverkusen Schloss Morsbroich, May/June 1962, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.I.1397–1400.

[iii] Paul de Vree to Heinz Mack, August 7, 1964, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.I.639.

[iv] Engelbert Eckert and Rochus Kowallek to Heinz Mack, July 10, 1961, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.I.173; Heinz Mack to the Städtisches Museum Leverkusen Schloss Morsbroich (draft), n.d., archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.I.1400; Otto Piene to Studio F (draft), April 24, 1960, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.159.

In terms of poster design, Piene and Mack worked closely with the printing firm Knoche, in Solingen-Wald near Düsseldorf, as evidenced by invoices in the archive from 1957 onwards. This collaboration resulted from personal acquaintance; Piene’s friend Walter Kirschbaum, whom he had met in a field hospital during the war, was the brother-in-law of the company owner.[i] Correspondence with the printers reveals the prices and printing details for the posters. One of the first documented invoices for posters dates from 1959: Piene ordered 200 DIN A1 offset posters from Knoche, which cost him DM 209.[ii] However, problems frequently arose when third parties were supposed to meet the costs, mostly when galleries failed to pay the outstanding invoices. For example, in February 1962, Werner Knoche wrote a letter to Mack informing him that Galerie Dato in Frankfurt am Main had not paid an invoice for DM 29 for eighty-two posters for Die Ruhe der Unruhe (Resting Restlessness), despite three reminders.[iii] As a result of Dato’s nonpayment of the invoice, Knoche, on the advice of a lawyer, demanded that Mack return the papers, by which he probably meant the posters. It was not until October 1962 (the original invoice having been issued by Knoche on July 26, 1961) that the gallery paid the invoice.[iv] Despite these occasional payment problems, the collaboration with Knoche was not affected—the ZERO artists worked with the printers until 1966.[v]

[i] Dirk Pörschmann, “ZERO bis unendlich: Genese und Geschichte einer Künstlerzeitschrift,” in Pörschmann and Visser 2012 (see note 12), p. 437.

[ii] Knoche printing company to Otto Piene, June 29, 1959, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.434.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Correspondence between the Knoche printing company and Heinz Mack, October 1962, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.I.327–328.

[v] Knoche printing company to Otto Piene, April 4, 1967, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.2451.

Otto Piene’s estate at the ZERO foundation contains numerous documents that relate to the preparation of posters, including several drafts of designs and sketches.[i] The majority are sketches of ideas, on which basis rough designs were tried out, such as for the poster for the exhibition Dynamo 1, at Galerie Renate Boukes, Wiesbaden, in 1959, or the poster for Piene’s exhibition Sensibilité prussienne (Prussian Sensibility), which took place in 1961 at Galerie Dato in Frankfurt am Main. The small 10.5 x 14.9 cm sketch for the 1961 exhibition was executed in ballpoint pen on a single sheet of paper, but for the Dynamo 1 sketch, executed in fountain pen, which he quickly drew over again, Piene used the front and back of his 1959 draft letter to Oskar Holweck (1924–2007).[ii]

[i] Ruth Magers and Rebecca Welkens, ‘Entwurf und Skizze im Nachlass von Otto Piene,‘ in Die Entwurfszeichnungen und Skizzen von Otto Piene im Archiv der ZERO foundation (Düsseldorf, 2023), pp. 11–15.

[ii] Design sketch for Dynamo 1, undated (see note 10); draft poster for the exhibition Sensibilité prussienne, n.d. (ca. 1961), archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. ZERO.2.IV.14.

The later design of the poster can already be guessed at from the drawing on the front; Piene quickly scribbled and numbered the names of the participants on the paper. The second draft is almost identical to the final poster, apart from the fact that the draft is in landscape format and the final version is portrait. In addition to the names in the middle section, the details of the exhibition are noted at the top and bottom of the page. As Piene crossed out the sketch, however, it must be assumed that this was a preliminary idea and was not passed on to the printers.

The ballpoint pen design for the Sensibilité prussienne poster is of a different quality. With spontaneous, sketchy lines, Piene outlined the design for the poster in portrait format. He put his name and the exhibition title at the top, sketched a circular shape in the middle, and wrote the name of the gallery and its address at the bottom. This did not quite fit into Piene’s small sketch, which is why he wrote over the edge, but also put a frame around this part later. Above the small sketch, he noted the words “A1 edition 500” (denoting a print run of 500 on A1 paper), which are clearly an instruction to the printers. The poster was executed according to this design; the dates and opening hours of the exhibition were actually omitted from the finished poster, which is why this sketch must be considered a concrete preliminary draft.[i] However, Piene usually also gave detailed instructions to the printers, which in some cases even rendered the sketches obsolete.[ii]

[i] It is safe to assume that many design sketches for posters remained at the printing firms and were not sent back to the artists. One example in support of this assumption is a draft letter from Otto Piene to the Knoche printing company, in which Piene specifically mentions a design drawing that was probably enclosed with the letter but is not found among the writings in his estate. A search of the Knoche printing company estate has so far been unsuccessful. See Otto Piene to the Knoche printing company (draft), May 1, 1960, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.498.

[ii] Otto Piene to the Knoche printing company (draft), April 26, 1960, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.503.

Günther Uecker used collage as a design element for the poster Sintflut der Nägel (Flood of Nails), which was created in 1963 in collaboration with the publisher Hans Möller, who owned the Hofhauspresse in Düsseldorf.[i]Uecker frequently took part in creating collages that resulted from artistic collaboration projects. One example is the collage for the 1962 Nul exhibition in Amsterdam, mentioned above. For the Sintflut poster, Uecker drew on two collages that he had made shortly before, in the same year as the poster—1963.[ii] On a 60.5 x 35 cm piece of chipboard, Uecker positioned newspaper cuttings showing New York’s skyline and a blue wave ornament, plus photographs of the upper part of a mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion, as well as his own head, and the lower part of a naked body bending forward. For the first collage, Sintflut Manifest—Überflutung der Welt. TRANSGRESSION. (Flood Manifesto—Flooding the World. TRANSGRESSION), he used white paint to make the background for the New York skyline and thin nails to mark the contours of the images as well as the larger dark areas of the photographs. Uecker wrote the title, together with his signature and the date, in pencil on the lower third of the board.

[i] Poster for Sintflut der Nägel, 1963, archive of the ZERO foundation, Holdings 0, mkp.ZERO.0.VII.93.

[ii] The two works were purchased in 2023 by the Friends of the ZERO foundation and are now in the ZERO foundation’s collection in Düsseldorf.

After he had completed it, Uecker photographed parts of the collage and in the same year combined them with various black-and-white photographs of his work to create a further collage, Sintflut (Die Engel fliegen) (Flood [The Angels Fly]), the dimensions of which (89 x 62.5 cm) are considerably larger than the work on chipboard. In the margins, he added individual words and short phrases, such as “the angels fly” or “spreading nonsense,” in black felt-tip pen. In addition to the photographic copies of the first collage, works such as his Sonnenüberflutung—Transgression (Flooded by the Sun—Transgression), created the same year, were also featured as photographic reproductions in the center of the upper half of the collage. In between are photographs of tables and other everyday objects with nails. At the bottom edge there is a photo of Uecker and the head of a woman. The woman’s head is the only component of the collage that was cut out of a newspaper and not printed on photographic paper. The two figures are positioned at the same level vertically, which suggests a connection in the otherwise chaotic overlapping and juxtaposition of the collage’s elements. The reproductions of Uecker’s nailed head stand out clearly because of the strong light and dark contrasts. Their recurring use in the collage underlines that these are motif constants.

The second collage was ultimately the template for the Sintflutmanifest (Flood manifesto) poster. At Hans Möller’s Hofhauspresse, the Sintflut collage was copied and reduced to a printable size, in this case DIN A2.[i] The words “SINTFLUT DER NÄGEL” (“Flood of Nails”) were then stamped in red on the upper left and center right edges of the printed posters. The words “hofhaus presse” were stamped in blue at the bottom of the poster. It is unclear where and how the Flood manifesto was distributed, but when Uecker contacted William E. Simmat (1926–1993) from Galerie D in August 1963, regarding the exhibition Sintflut der Nägel,he asked whether it would be possible to use his posters—he still had 500 of them—as invitations. He wrote that they would then have to be printed in red, with names and “Galerie D,” and enclosed a sketch with the letter.[ii] A further sketch in blue ballpoint pen on the stamped poster, which Uecker also sent to Simmat, shows how he envisioned the invitation card.[iii] Uecker was pragmatic here, for this kept the costs for the exhibition’s advertising material very low, finding a further use for a well-considered and sophisticated collage artwork.

[i] See the June 1, 1964 letter from Heinz Mack to Paul de Vree (see note 18), which shows that Hans Möller could only print certain sizes of paper in offset.

[ii] Günther Uecker to William E. Simmat, August 15, 1963, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of William E. Simmat, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.7.I.22.

[iii] Design of the invitation card for the Sintflut der Nägel exhibition at Galerie D, Frankfurt am Main, 1963, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of William E. Simmat, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.7.IV.2.

In a slightly modified form and with additional text, the manifesto was later sent out as an invitation card, albeit without the red and blue stamps of the Hofhauspresse. In September 1963, the exhibition, in which Uecker mainly exhibited nailed everyday objects, opened with an event: Bazon Brock (b. 1936) read a text while Uecker simultaneously nailed it down at Brock’s feet.

The designs of the ZERO posters frequently use photographic elements, mostly photographs of works to illustrate and concretize the content to be expected in the exhibition. In addition to the posters that show works representing the participating artists, there are some examples in the group of ZERO posters for which abstract photographs were selected for the design. These include the posters for the group exhibitions Konstruktivisten (Constructivists), held at the Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, in 1962, and Integratie 64, at the Arena-Centrum Deurme, Antwerp, in 1964. Mack designed the posters for both exhibitions and in each case used his own works as photographic templates.

In May 1962, Kultermann asked Mack whether he could design the poster for the Constructivists exhibition, and Mack accepted shortly afterwards.[i] He used one of his own experimental photographs for the poster and the exhibition catalog.[ii]

[i] Städtisches Museum Leverkusen Schloss Morsbroich to Heinz Mack, May 30, 1962, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.I.1397.

[ii] Many thanks to the Atelier Mack, in particular to Heinz Mack and Sophia Sotke, who generously gave me a great deal of information about how the posters were created.

A comparison with Mack’s oeuvre from this period reveals many overlaps between the photograph and his series of Dynamic Structures. Jagged white or radiating lines protrude from a funnel-shaped white area on a black background. In the center of the portrait-format poster, a black strip with the inscription “Constructivists” divides the design, the photograph in the upper part being reflected in the part below. The depicted structures are vaguely reminiscent of visualizations of sounds and voices. Numerous similar examples can be found in Mack’s oeuvre of paintings and drawings—Mack had worked on the depiction of rhythmic structures in a musical style since the early nineteen-fifties. Other examples of similar representations of Mack’s Dynamic Structures are also found in ZERO 3, which ensured that the experimental photograph used for the poster became a distinctive work of Mack’s.[i]

For the Integratie 64 poster, Mack chose a photograph of the Sahara Relief, which was created in 1960–61 as a work for the public sphere, and which covered the façade of the Mathildenhof School in Leverkusen.[ii] The poster features a photograph of the façade taken from below, revealing a horizontal zigzag structure.

[i] Magdalena Zorn, “Das Klingen sehen: Musikalität im Werk von Heinz Mack,” in Heinz Mack (Cologne, 2021), pp. 58–73; photograph of the work Dynamische Struktur by Heinz Mack, 1961, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.V.106.

[ii] The reliefs were removed from the school’s façade and no longer exist. Sophia Sotke, Das Sahara-Projekt von Heinz Mack im internationalen Kontext von ZERO und Land Art, 1959–1976, Ph.D. diss. (University of Cologne, 2020), pp. 65–66.

The arrangement of the slats varies, creating an effect of different incidences of light and shadow that changes depending on the viewer’s position.[i] In a letter to Paul de Vree, one of the three organizers of the exhibition, Mack wrote in detail about what he was planning for the poster design:

[i] Ibid.

This letter demonstrates that Mack desired to keep as close as possible to the theme of the exhibition with his poster design, and sought to establish a visual connection between art, technology, and architecture. In addition to wanting to produce a fitting design, Mack also mentioned that he was planning to make a graphic design of his relief for the poster; however, in the end a photograph was used that was only slightly abstract. Mack’s further correspondence with de Vree reveals that he did not keep to the deadline for delivering the design; it can only be speculated that the photograph was possibly used due to time constraints. From today’s perspective, as a result, the envisaged abstract drawing of his relief, and thus Mack’s anonymity, did not come about: Mack’s relief must have been immediately recognizable as his work, at least to aficionados, because it was a work in the public sphere, and, more importantly, it had already been published in ZERO 3.[i] In both of these examples, Mack adeptly placed his own works in public spaces by reprinting them on posters for group exhibitions.

[i] With a print run of 1225 copies, ZERO 3 had a higher circulation than either ZERO 1 (400 copies) or ZERO 2 (350 copies). See Pörschmann and Visser 2012 (see note 11), pp. 403–4.

The fact that the works of individual artists could be identified as such via the posters may have been mainly due to the fact that they had developed their own recognizable styles. As one of the few professional graphic artists in the ZERO circle, Almir Mavignier (1925–2018) developed his own unique style that in the nineteen-fifties and nineteen-sixties was often based on grids and dots. In contrast to the other ZERO artists, Mavignier’s poster designs and artworks were mutually dependent: often, the poster designs resulted in independent graphic works, which blurred the boundary between artwork and commercial graphics in his work.[i]

After studying painting in Rio de Janeiro, Mavignier moved to Europe and studied visual communication at the Ulm School of Design (HfG Ulm) from 1953 to 1958.[ii] Through Piene and his participation in the 7th Evening Exhibition, Mavignier joined the ZERO artists and exhibited regularly with them until 1963.[iii] In addition to the artworks he created, during this period Mavignier produced over 200 posters, most of which were cultural posters, for example, for the Museum Ulm, which he executed as commissions.[iv] It was also in Ulm that Mavignier first developed his “modular” or “additive” posters for the museum, which basically always followed a similar structure but could be adapted for each new exhibition. Individual modules were rearranged for each show, resulting in a serial and coherent character that was recognizable to the public, yet which still allowed the works to be individually designed. It was particularly important to Mavignier to have as much freedom as possible in the design of the posters, especially with regard to the graphic design, the choice of colors, and the supervision of the printing.[v]

[i] Axel von Saldern, “Almir Mavignier,” in Axel von Saldern, ed., Mavignier: Plakate, exh. cat., Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe/Deutsches Plakat Museum (Hamburg and Essen, 1981), pp. 46–47.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Otto Piene to Almir Mavignier (draft), March 5, 1958, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Otto Piene, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2.I.854; Almir Mavignier to Heinz Mack, April 28, 1963, archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.I.809.

[iv] von Saldern 1981 (see note 48), p. 46.

[v] von Saldern 1981 (see note 48).

One of the most striking examples of his innovative approach to poster design was on show in the exhibition Mavignier: Pictures + Posters at Galerie Nota, Munich, in 1961.[i]

[i] This was one of a series of exhibitions; the Mavignier exhibition was the fourth. Previously, there had been exhibitions by Morellet, Mack, and Piene at Galerie Nota in Munich. See Antje von Graevenitz, “Gerhard von Graevenitz as Curator,” in Caianiello and Visser 2015 (see note 12), pp. 275–92.

There are two large white circles at the top and bottom of the vertically aligned silkscreen poster, with Mavignier’s name at the top and the exhibition title and further information about the show in small letters at the bottom—one of the hallmarks of Mavignier’s designs. The two white circles are part of a grid of what are otherwise black circles on a blue background, which, apart from the circle in the middle, are divided or cropped by the edge of the poster. With this, Mavignier pursued a specific strategy for outdoor spaces.[i] Several posters were to be placed vertically and horizontally next to each other so that together they formed a large image of a grid. Thus the poster design was subjected to a logical, overall concept that worked both for individual posters and for larger numbers and took account of outdoor spaces and the public’s perception.

[i] Ibid., p. 287.

For the ZERO artists discussed in this essay—Mack, Piene, Uecker, and Mavignier—designing posters was an essential part of their work. This work was formally located at the interface between art and commercial art, but often exhibited extremely artistic content, as the examples cited here demonstrate. In addition to their principal purpose—generating public interest in the exhibitions advertised—the posters also fulfilled other tasks for the artists. While Piene was completely committed to the idea of ZERO, as can be seen in his designs for posters, Mack also—but certainly not exclusively—used the posters to generate interest in his art. For Uecker, the value of the posters was not so much as an advertising strategy, but was more idealistic, and above all artistic, while for Mavignier posters always fulfilled the dual function of artistic expression and advertising, which also secured his livelihood. The heterogeneous character of the posters in the ZERO archive, mentioned above, is thus reflected not only in their motifs but also in their function, which ultimately results from how each of the artists discussed understood the poster as a design medium.

The example of the documentation room in the 1966 exhibition Zero in Bonn, again makes it very clear that Mack, Piene, and Uecker also attached great importance to the posters for their joint work. The walls of this room were literally papered with numerous posters from the ZERO period. Display cases in front of the walls contained catalogs, manifestos, and invitation cards from the period 1957/58 to 1966. Entry to the exhibition was via the documentation room, which was intended to inform visitors about the history of Mack, Piene, and Uecker, and to provide an introduction to the exhibition’s context.[i] With this mise-en-scène of posters and other advertising materials, the artists, who had designed this room together—the only one in the exhibition—sought to create a form of self-presentation that on the one hand served to situate their work in its historical context, and on the other to visualize and enhance their joint activities. Despite the different positions of the artists, the poster was presented to the outside world as a joint product, which was also a main reason for the far-reaching, international success of the Düsseldorf ZERO artists.

[i] In 1964, Mack created a concept for a similar room in London; see Thekla Zell, “‘The Ship ZERO Is Casting Out Its Anchor, and the Voyage Is Over.’ ZERO in Bonn and a Final Midnight Ball,” in Caianiello and Visser 2015 (see note 12), p. 403.

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