Biography

Otto Piene (1928–2014) was a German artist and co-founder of the avant-garde artist group ZERO. He is considered one of the central figures of post-war art and a pioneer of light, fire, and air art.

Piene was born on April 18, 1928, in Laasphe, Westphalia, and grew up in the devastated postwar landscape of Germany after experiencing war and military service. In the late 1940s, he studied at the Blocher School and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich before transferring to the Düsseldorf Art Academy and studying philosophy at the University of Cologne at the same time. This dual influence of artistic practice and philosophical thinking sharpened his view of art as a field of experimentation for perception, space, and social visions.

In 1957, he founded the ZERO group in Düsseldorf together with Heinz Mack, which Günther Uecker also joined in 1961. ZERO saw itself as the “zero point of art,” a radical new beginning after the darkness of war and National Socialism. Piene initially exhibited in group exhibitions from the mid-1950s onwards and had his first solo exhibition in 1959 at the Schmela Gallery in Düsseldorf. He was represented several times at the documenta in Kassel (1959, 1964, 1977) and designed the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1971.

Otto Piene's color gouaches mark a decisive step in his effort to merge color, fire, and smoke into his own pictorial space. The starting point is

Objects by Otto Piene