Otto Piene Retrospective at Museum Kunst Palast Explores Zero Movement and Sky Art

The Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf will host a retrospective exhibition on the Zero movement from April 9 to July 9, 2006, covering the period 1953–1966. The show spans from early experiments by the Japanese Gutai group to the final manifestations of the Düsseldorf Zero Group in 1966, which lent its name to this international movement involving artists such as Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Lucio Fontana, and Jean Tinguely. On February 2, 2006, Otto Piene, who co-founded the Zero Group with Heinz Mack in 1957, was interviewed in his Düsseldorf apartment. Piene is known for light sculptures and performances, smoke and fire paintings, and multimedia spectacles that transformed artistic forms in the second half of the 20th century. He later invented Sky Art and moved to the United States, where he directed the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT from 1974 to 1993. The exhibition will travel to the Musée d'Art Moderne de Saint-Étienne at the end of 2006.