Heinz Mack: Chromatische Konstellation

Heinz Mack: Chromatische Konstellation
MACK, HEINZ
1931 Lollar

Title: Chromatische Konstellation.
Date: 2010.
Technique: Acrylic on canvas.
Measurement: 130 x 159.5cm.
Notation: Signed and dated lower centre: mack 10.
Frame/Pedestal: Studio strip.

This work comes with a certificate of the artist from July 2011.

Provenance:
- Galerie Samuelis Baumgarte, Bielefeld
- Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia (acquired from the previous owner in 2011)

- A thoroughly harmonious spectacle of light and colour in an attractive format
- Since 1991, Heinz Mack has once again devoted himself intensively to painting
- Mack's mastery lies in his ability to lend simple forms a sensual purity and radiance


Mack and painting – a luminous explosion of colors
The name Heinz Mack is inextricably linked to the international ZERO movement of the late 1950s and 1960s – a symbol of a radical artistic new beginning after the Second World War. Mack's multifaceted oeuvre unfolds in an impressive range of sculptural works, light reliefs, and kinetic objects, from installations and spatial projects to spectacular land art productions. The central concern of his work also remains present in painting, drawing, graphic art, and photography: the visualization of light as a creative, spiritual, and energetic force.
After Heinz Mack had completely abandoned painting just a few years after the founding of ZERO, he returned to brush and canvas in 1991—after almost three decades. What followed was an incomparable explosion of color: using red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, the artist unfolded the entire spectrum of light in brilliant rainbow colors—as light-flooded, vibrant compositions of extraordinary energy and radiance.

“Music and painting are like two beautiful sisters.”
Inspired by the musical concept of chromaticism, Heinz Mack—himself a trained pianist and passionate admirer of the modern avant-garde, especially twelve-tone technique and minimalism—describes his non-representational paintings as “chromatic constellations.” In them, he allows the colors to resonate with each other like tones – sensitively nuanced and harmoniously graded or colliding in powerful contrasts. As the artist puts it: “Music and painting are like two beautiful sisters [...]” (Heinz Mack, quoted from ibid., p. 84).

A cosmos of colorful opulence as a manifestation of light
“In my chromatic paintings, ” he writes, "forms have only the meaning of a rhythmic boundary within which light appears as color. In order for me to embark on the adventure of pure painting, the form of the boundary must be as simple or as open as possible. [...] The identity of light and color, which becomes visible in the spectrum, is the subject of my painting—it is its sole subject." (Heinz Mack, quoted in the exhibition catalog Mack—lichtkunst, Kunst-Museum Ahlen, Cologne, 1994, p. 36.)
The “Chromatic Constellation” from 2010 reveals a precisely balanced composition of squares and diamonds interlocking and overlapping in steps against a gray background. A color spectrum unfolds in horizontal sequence from black and gray to deep blue and turquoise to bright yellow, warm orange, and luminous red. The strict order of the geometric structure is enlivened by an open, animated brushstroke: loosely placed strokes interweave to form a delicate, vibrant mesh that dissolves the contours of the shapes and allows them to vibrate in pulsating light. In works such as this, Heinz Mack combines the ascetic clarity of formal reduction with the sensual richness of color orchestration—resulting in paintings of incomparable magic and timeless radiance.
Doris Hansmann


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Arrangement after the auction.



Explanations to the Catalogue

Heinz Mack
Germany
ZERO
Post-War Art
Post War
2010s
Studio bar
Colour
Painting
Acrylic