(born in Lollar, Hessen in 1931)
Red Painting, 2005, signed and dated mack5, signed, dated and titled with direction arrow on the reverse, acrylic on canvas, 88 x 94 cm

Certificate:
Atelier Heinz Mack, Mönchengladbach, April 2024

Provenance:
Artists studio
Galerie c. art, Dornbirn, Austria
Private Collection Austria

The impression of shimmering light and dynamic movement is further emphasised by the slight blurring at the edges of the forms. Mack thus creates a field of energy in his painting that opens up into a sphere beyond the rationally comprehensible.

He himself aptly describes his intention: “One of the greatest challenges in painting is that all colours and all ways of using them must respect the ‘principle of energies’! Because colours are carriers of energies that radiate in such a way that light becomes colour and colour is light.”
Heinz Mack cited in: Heinz Mack. Painting:
The Structures of Chromatic Constellations,
Munich: Hirmer Verlag GmbH, 2023, p. 113

The central artistic theme in Heinz Mack’s extraordinarily diverse oeuvre is light. The German sculptor, painter, and co-founder of the internationally influential ZERO group took part in important exhibitions such as documenta 2 (1959) and 3 (1964) and the Venice Biennale (1970) at an early stage and is now represented in numerous renowned collections. He returned to painting in 1991 following his early Tachist period and from then on translated the essential elements of his works such as the abstract formal language, light and shadow grids, vibrating movement and the spirituality of the non-representational into painterly qualities.
In Mack’s paintings, colour intensity always equates to light intensity.

The present work, Red Painting, embodies this unique visual experience of the characteristic interpenetration of colour, light, and surface. The intense and nuanced colour of the fiery, blazing red tones in the composition of monochrome colour fields is captivating.
Despite being framed at the sides and top by dark, black-blue bodies, the red tones seem to extend into infinity. The translucent application of paint, the varying density of the pigment and the shimmering white background create a great lightness and make the colours appear dematerialised, almost floating.