Günther Uecker, whose sculptural paintings and Op-art became associated with the Zero group of artists, has died.
From 1960 until 1966 he, alongside Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, advocated for monochromes and the use of light installation, at odds with the gestural painting prevailing in Germany at the time.
He began to introduce nails into his work from 1956, but they became his abiding motif after Zero dissolved midway through the following decade. Uecker pinned the nails, bought in bulk from carpentry suppliers, en masse to canvases, as well as chairs, pianos, sewing machines and other such everyday objects. While the artist saw the act of hammering a single nail as a violent one, in their repetition the effect becomes meditative for both artist and viewer, a mode of creativity prevailing through the aggression.
‘The theme of my artistic work is the vulnerability of man by man,’ he said.
His work, while aesthetically minimal, was political and in the following decades he married the studio works with actions and activism. In 1968 he and Gerhard Richter staged a ‘kiss-in’ at Kunsthalle Baden-Baden museum, kissing for the camera of the waiting media; in 1978 Uecker rode a camel through the corridors of Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he was teaching at the time.
In the 1980s he made ash paintings in response to the Chernobyl disaster and later exhibited fabric text works baring human rights messages in China.
