About the work
“I love all pure colours equally, including black and white. I am sure that I can paint and visualise all colours within a painting in such a way that they strike up a single concerto grosso. I attempt to make ‘Black Light’ visible in my black paintings. Here, black is not the absence of light, but rather the presence of black light. A good black painting can only be understood by someone who understands colour.”
White in white, black in black, black and white, as well as grey as a mediator between the two in all its warm and cooler-hued gradations – Heinz Mack has become a true master in this spectrum of un-colourful colourfulness. Their artistic power and beauty is also revealed in this sheet from 2007, which presents itself in a stacking of rectangular elements standing on its point, which opens from the black at the lower edge of the painting into increasingly lighter shades toward the top, concluding there in a small square.
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.
