Lot 24 | Heinz Mack | Licht-Stufen

The beginnings
Heinz Mack is one of the most fascinating personalities in post-war German art, and his creative energy remains unbroken to this day. He became known as one of the central figures of the ZERO movement, which he founded together with Otto Piene in Düsseldorf in 1957. The artist is a radical and ingenious crossover artist between painting, sculpture, space and nature. He experiments with a wide variety of materials, media and forms, working with mirrors, metals, glass and sand, designing vibrant light reliefs, kinetic objects, light-reflecting cubes and monumental light steles, installing his works in deserts and on glaciers.
Born in Lollar, Hesse, in 1931, the young Mack first studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1950 onwards, later supplementing his education with a degree in philosophy from the University of Cologne. In a shared studio with Otto Piene, who like Mack had studied philosophy in Cologne, the so-called evening exhibitions were organised – presentations in which new aesthetic concepts were tested. Their artistic experiments were soon expanded to include spectacular actions in public spaces and legendary environments. From the outset, their efforts focused on light, movement and a conscious departure from the traditional understanding of art and the subjective gesture of Informel

"Licht-Stufen" (Light Steps) – the beginning of a non-representational search for form
Mack's impetus for a radical reinterpretation of the visual arts initially found its medium in sculpture. While some of his early works in wood and stone show a gradual detachment from natural motifs, the two-part stele from 1955 entitled "Licht-Stufen" (Light Steps) already conveys the impression of a completely free, non-representational form. The slender column rises in a staggered structure with ten steps, giving the object a rhythmically structured upward movement. The onyx – a precious natural stone from the chalcedony group – is interspersed with lively, extremely decorative light to amber-coloured marbling, thus becoming an active design element of the sculpture. This impressive early work reveals Mack's pursuit of an art that, free of personal signature, transcends the purely material and becomes a sensual and spiritual experience of light and space – entirely in keeping with the ZERO concept of liberating art from subjective gesture and reducing it to elementary phenomena such as light, clarity and structure.
Doris Hansmann