Nanda Vigo, the inner space

1. ZERO

“It is not a style, and it is not a group. It is not a movement. And I don’t want it to become one. ZERO is an attitude.” That is how Otto Piene, founder member of ZERO, defined this phenomenon, which he launched in 1957 with Heinz Mack in Düsseldorf.

Nanda Vigo made contact with these artists in the early 1960s, through Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni. She had been seeing Manzoni since 1959 and the two became a couple. Right from the outset, multiple ties united Vigo and the artists of the movement. They shared a common mindset and their ideas converged in the same direction. Through their creations, the ZERO artists embodied a renewal: they redefined modernity, to overcome the traumas of the Second World War. Their visual-arts research gave priority to light and its dynamic, two themes dear to Vigo, which she materialised in many ways through her practice. She showed her work alongside theirs in Europe, and contributed to the group’s recognition in Italy, where she organised the touring exhibition ZERO avantgarde 1965, in Milan, Venice, Turin, Rome and Brescia.

Thanks to the support of the ZERO foundation in Düsseldorf, a selection of original archive material is on show here: the three issues of the ZERO review, disseminating their innovative ideas, published for the Evening Exhibitions between 1958 and 1961; the first invitation cards; photographs of the group; and 23 posters of the movement’s most iconic exhibitions. These documents taken together attest to the diversity of practices – visual arts, performance, exhibition and publishing – of these artists, who also curated their own shows.

They make the link between Nanda Vigo’s work and the artistic transformations of her time, and show the incredible ideological vitality of the network, active from 1957 to 1966, when its founding members, Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker, announced its dissolution, at the ZERO in Bonn exhibition.

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Selection of 23 original posters from the most emblematic exhibitions of the ZERO movement:

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