About the work
This work from the series of “Small Colour Chromaticisms” from 2022 is characterised by various shades of blue. Heinz Mack layers the individual bands of colour here in a very differentiated way. In this work he was successful in both creating individual shades of blue and at the same time developing a colour progression from light to dark. The specific properties of the pastels favours the transitions of the shades. The colours can be easily blended, and both gentle transitions and contours and textures are generated. With this application of colour, characteristic of Mack, the works also always evoke an intensive sense of space. Fascinating is the colour development from the lighter shades of blue at the lower edge of the painting to the dark at the top. Although Mack pursues no expressive notion in his works, his colour compositions nonetheless create an immense inner sonority. In the contemplation of this chromaticism, the infiniteness of a broad sky landscape appears before the inner eye as much as the depths of the ocean.
Mack’s interest in the effective power of colours is based on his passion for the phenomenon of light. As a co-founder of the Zero movement, he occupied himself with the varying effects of light throughout his life. In his painting, he repeatedly addresses the colourfulness of the light, which, guided through a prism, is separated into the spectral colours violet, blue, turquoise, yellow, orange and red. Heinz Mack takes these spectral colours as his theme in his Colour Chromaticisms.
Text authored and provided by Dr Andrea Fink, art historian
The art historian, curator and freelance publicist Andrea Fink studied art history, cultural studies and humanities, modern history and philosophy in Bochum and Vienna. Doctorate in 2007 on the work of the Scottish artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. As a freelance curator and art consultant, her clients include, among others, the Kunstverein (art association) Ahlen, Kunstverein Soest, Wella Museum, Museum am Ostwall Dortmund, ThyssenKrupp AG, Kulturstiftung Ruhr, Osthaus Museum Hagen, Franz Haniel GmbH, Kunsthalle Krems, Austria.
