Exhibition, 25 Feb 2016 - 26 Jun 2016

ZERO, Nouveau Réalisme and questioning the reality

Stiftung Ahlers Pro Arte, Herford, Germany

From the mid-1950s, new strategies of appropriation of reality developed in European art, manifested in works, texts and a network of artist friends. Young painters and sculptors have resisted the visualization of inner psychic processes as practiced in the dominant art of the Informal. In cities such as Milan, Dusseldorf or Paris, the new generation of artists found themselves and discovered that their colleagues across national borders were pursuing similar goals.

The rejection of the informal art was their most important common point. ZERO, Azimut, G58, GRAV or New Realism were groups that formed at the intersection of interests and artistic methods. Artists of the same spirit have exhibited together, published in self-published publications and participated in actions together. They asked the same questions in the world and came up with comparable answers in their theoretical works and reflections. The question of the relevance of art for the shaping of reality leads to a reduction of its pictorial languages in order to allow objective results in the works.

The works represented an appropriation and questioning of reality and were to lead to a direct confrontation with the realities of art and life. Themes such as monochrome, serial structures, coincidence, light and fire have emerged as artificial or elemental-natural media for image production. In addition to the reduction of visual language and associated experiences in the fields of form, material and technology, the expansion of the work has been a central aspect of Zero and New Realism. The limitation of color and form and the methodical reduction of the artist's writing were dialectically opposed to spatial, material and media boundaries.