About the work
Heinz Mack has been exploring the essence of the colour black since his early active years as an artist. He produced his first black painting in 1952. These were initially deeply dark works still characterised by phases of disorientation, depression and trepidation. “As a young artist, I also had black thoughts while painting my black paintings”, according to Heinz Mack in 2002. “My first black paintings originated from pure desperation. I simply no longer knew where I was heading with painting after working with Tachism for a summer.”
The artistic path became increasingly clear, but the artist never abandons his contention with the un-colourful black. The colour increasingly liberates itself from all metaphorical meanings over time, acquires autonomy. Many black and black and white paintings have been and are still being created today. The pastel from 2018 is one of those works in which a geometric repertoire of forms conquers the surface: squares and rectangles with various side lengths accompany one another, overlap and penetrate one another at various places and combine into a large, coherent form, which floats like a crystalline body in front of the paper-white background. The artist thereby directs special attention to the elaboration of the black and white and grey areas. The interior structures of the individual fields, which appear like linked textile fabrics, correspond with the rhythmic juxtaposition of the pictorial elements.
In this way, the stringency of the geometric structure of form combines with the painterly treatment of the surfaces, links rationality and emotionality, the planning spirit with the sensuality of free painting.
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.
