Heinz Mack/Lucio Fontana

Ben Brown Fine Arts is delighted to announce the opening of Heinz Mack /Lucio Fontana, a groundbreaking show placing the oeuvres of these two masters of 20th Century Art in dialogue. Running from October 6th  to December 21st at 12 Brook's Mews (London W1K 4DG), the show will focus on Fontana's monochrome white paintings and a selection of Heinz Mack's most significant paintings and sculptures, dating between 1957 and 1966 and coming directly from the artist's studio. This will be the 3rd show of works by Fontana curated by the gallery, as well as the first show of Heinz Mack works in London since 1965.

Heinz Mack is one of the founding member of the hugely influential ZERO movement, an artistic group which crystallised in Germany in the second part of the 1950s. The term ZERO was coined in 1957 by Mack and Otto Piene to describe their artistic endeavor, and it later came to define the International Art Movement born out of their radical gesture. The central concerns of the movement were to do with the harmonious balance between the natural possibilities of the medium itself and the artificial intervention of the artistic hand. Far from considering these two elements in opposition, ZERO strove to create a dialogue between the two, one where the aesthetics would be as pure and organic as possible, allowing for the work's true voice to emerge, facilitated by the artist's intervention.

The relationship between Fontana and Mack started in 1959, when Mach visited Milan and met the Italian artist, who was almost a generation older and had already been a powerful influence on the ZERO group. Lucio Fontana's ideology of Spazialismo shared many of the concerns central to the ZERO movement, and in the years that followed the two artists developed a close bond and an ongoing artistic dialogue.