ZERO Forms in Düsseldorf

Founded by Otto Piene and Heinz Mack in Düsseldorf, four years before New Tendencies, Zero was inspired by the notion of starting over (hence the name). The group grew throughout the ’50s and early ’60s into an international movement of artists and architects who sought to create a new form of art that was both rational and objective, focusing on a work’s materials. Also associated with the Gutai movement in Japan, Zero rejected traditional art forms and embraced new technologies, focusing on geometric abstraction and kinetic art. As Margit Rosen would write on the connection between New Tendencies and computer art: “New Tendencies’ idea of art as research, the endeavor to enforce a constructive, rational, demystified art and to overcome the gap between current art practices and processes in science and technology, as well as the wish to stop the art market from defining artistic aims and methods, made it possible to open this art movement to the world of computing technology and its own band of practitioners.”