Heinz Mack *
(born in Lollar, Hessen 1931)
Dynamische Struktur Weiß in Weiß (Dynamic Structure: White on White), 1958, signed, dated and titled on the reverse Mack 58 and with direction arrow, synthetic resin on canvas, 100 x 110 cm, framed
Provenance:
Galerie Denise René - Hans Mayer, Dusseldorf
Galerie Alfred Schmela, Düsseldorf
Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia (acquired from the above in 1974 and through inheritance to the current owner)
Exhibited:
Galerie Denise René – Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf, Heinz Mack – Arbeiten von 1955 – 1975, November 7, 1975 – January 7, 1976, exhib.-cat. Düsseldorf 1975, no. 24 with full page b/w-ill. and exhib.-view (there dated 1959)
Literature:
Heinz Mack, Robert Fleck (Ed.), Heinz Mack ZERO Malerei: catalogue raisonné 1956–1968, vol. I, Munich 2017, no. 1959/51, p. 51 with col.-ill. (there dated 1959)
Dynamic Structure White on White belongs to an early group of works dating from 1957 to 1963, during which Mack was still working on textile supports. It was created in the context of ZERO (1957–1966), the Düsseldorf-based artists’ group of which he was a co-founder. Here, serial structure as a compositional principle (later combined with industrial technologies and materials) opens up a vibrant, immaterial space.
Mack begins his essay ‘The New Dynamic Structure’ with the statement: ‘When we speak of painting, we speak of colour.’ This emphasis on colour reflects his conviction that ‘painting visits our eye’ and that colour is a matter of ‘seeing, not reading’. Mack consequently seeks to give colour its ‘best meaning’, something he considers achieved when colour ‘purely fulfils its eminent pictorial function’ and thereby attains its ‘freedom’. Put differently, Mack seeks to make colour (and, through colour, painting itself) autonomous and independent, freeing it from all external constraints. To achieve this, he states: ‘I give colour a vibration, that is, I give colour a structure.’ The concepts of vibration and structure are central to Mack’s thinking. They point to the significance, within his aesthetic, of colour’s need to attain a state of ‘continuous pictorial movement’. Mack describes structure as ‘dynamic’, thereby suggesting that it contains not only movement but also energy: the force that gives rise to the phenomenon of movement.
‘Dynamic Structure’ was a radically new concept devised by Mack as a means of revolutionising painting. His artistic programme sought to dissolve the conventional materials of painting into light, rhythm and movement. The longer the viewer fixes their gaze upon the pictorial structure, the more powerfully the eye itself is drawn by its constantly shifting configurations into a shimmering state of vibration.
Specialist: Dr. Petra Maria Schäpers
(born in Lollar, Hessen 1931)
Dynamische Struktur Weiß in Weiß (Dynamic Structure: White on White), 1958, signed, dated and titled on the reverse Mack 58 and with direction arrow, synthetic resin on canvas, 100 x 110 cm, framed
Provenance:
Galerie Denise René - Hans Mayer, Dusseldorf
Galerie Alfred Schmela, Düsseldorf
Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia (acquired from the above in 1974 and through inheritance to the current owner)
Exhibited:
Galerie Denise René – Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf, Heinz Mack – Arbeiten von 1955 – 1975, November 7, 1975 – January 7, 1976, exhib.-cat. Düsseldorf 1975, no. 24 with full page b/w-ill. and exhib.-view (there dated 1959)
Literature:
Heinz Mack, Robert Fleck (Ed.), Heinz Mack ZERO Malerei: catalogue raisonné 1956–1968, vol. I, Munich 2017, no. 1959/51, p. 51 with col.-ill. (there dated 1959)
Dynamic Structure White on White belongs to an early group of works dating from 1957 to 1963, during which Mack was still working on textile supports. It was created in the context of ZERO (1957–1966), the Düsseldorf-based artists’ group of which he was a co-founder. Here, serial structure as a compositional principle (later combined with industrial technologies and materials) opens up a vibrant, immaterial space.
Mack begins his essay ‘The New Dynamic Structure’ with the statement: ‘When we speak of painting, we speak of colour.’ This emphasis on colour reflects his conviction that ‘painting visits our eye’ and that colour is a matter of ‘seeing, not reading’. Mack consequently seeks to give colour its ‘best meaning’, something he considers achieved when colour ‘purely fulfils its eminent pictorial function’ and thereby attains its ‘freedom’. Put differently, Mack seeks to make colour (and, through colour, painting itself) autonomous and independent, freeing it from all external constraints. To achieve this, he states: ‘I give colour a vibration, that is, I give colour a structure.’ The concepts of vibration and structure are central to Mack’s thinking. They point to the significance, within his aesthetic, of colour’s need to attain a state of ‘continuous pictorial movement’. Mack describes structure as ‘dynamic’, thereby suggesting that it contains not only movement but also energy: the force that gives rise to the phenomenon of movement.
‘Dynamic Structure’ was a radically new concept devised by Mack as a means of revolutionising painting. His artistic programme sought to dissolve the conventional materials of painting into light, rhythm and movement. The longer the viewer fixes their gaze upon the pictorial structure, the more powerfully the eye itself is drawn by its constantly shifting configurations into a shimmering state of vibration.
Specialist: Dr. Petra Maria Schäpers
