About the work
A painting of an almost material quality, seemingly loosely woven together from layers of strokes and hatchings placed on top of one another, sometimes braided together, in a spectrum ranging from delicate shades of rose through pink, lilac and violet to turquoise and deep, dark blue. And then, completely unexpected, the surprising counterpoint at the top edge of the painting with a rich orange and warm shade of yellow.
Heinz Mack, who has been radically active in the spirit of pure abstraction since the period of the avant garde ZERO movement, has dedicated himself passionately to colour. The spectrum of the rainbow unfolds in his painting: vital, temperamental, inexhaustible in its pallet and orchestration. Structure and colouring reign over his paintings, liberated from all external conditions, dedicated only to the togetherness and suitability of colour and form.
Mack’s leitmotif of rapport, of a regularly repeating pattern appears here in a vertical-horizontal rhythm of squares stacked on top of and woven together with one another: as a loose texture spreading over the pictorial area, which is stopped at the outer edges of the sheet by a frame of narrow stripes of slightly blurred chalk, which subtly counters the dissolution of the open structure.
Text authored and provided by Dr. Doris Hansmann, Art historian
Studies of art history, theater, film and television, English and Romance Languages at the University of Cologne, doctorated in 1994. Research assistant at the Art Museum Düsseldorf. Lecturer and project manager at Wienand Verlag, Cologne. Freelance work as an author, editor and book producer for publishers and museums in Germany and abroad. From 2011 chief editor at Wienand Verlag, from 2019 to 2021 senior editor at DCV, Dr. Cantz’sche Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin. Numerous publications on the art of the 20th and 21st centuries.
