BERLIN.- Works by ZERO artists Heinz Mack and Otto Piene are more than sought-after on the international market. They currently reach record prices in auctions, often far too high for young collectors. Ketterer Kunst in Berlin now offers an affordable alternative.

Only in December 2012 did Ketterer Kunst in Munich sell an acrylic work and an aluminum relief by Heinz Mack for € 232.000* and € 156.000* respectively - and that with starting prices of € 60.000 and € 28.000. Otto Piene‘s acrylic work “Weithin sichtbar“ from 1967 climbed from € 5.000 to € 61.000* in October 2012. Acquisitions in those fields are what new buyers can only dream of. However, they don’t have to go entirely without the desired works by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, because Ketterer Kunst now stages a sales exhibition with original prints by both ZERO artists in Berlin-Charlottenburg.

Just as many young art collectors do, Heinz Mack and Otto Piene always crossed borders and opened new frontiers. The beginning was made during their ZERO years, when they created unprecedented art by critically approaching traditions. In the end ZERO stands for “the immessurable zone in which an old state passes over in a new one“, said Otto Piene in 1960 when explaining the group’s name and principles. The Manifest Zero der neue Idealismus (Manifesto Zero the New Idealism) brings it to the point: “Zero is silence. Zero is the beginning (…)“.

With these contents, the quest for something new, something significant, the artists of ZERO are all in line with the contemporary spirit. When Piene and Mack speak of an art movement in a sense of a transformation, “which is supposed to be base-, zero- and starting point for a new sensitization for the environment“, they express just what many people ask for today.