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Lot Essay
Shortlisted for the prestigious Premio Marzotto, the stunning Der Himmel über Samarkand (The Sky Over Samarkand), 1963, is one of Heinz Mack’s only blue canvases. Der Himmel über Samarkand presents a vast expanse of cheerful, luminescent blue over which Mack painted sheer cerulean and sapphire ribbons; at the top, corrugated clouds vibrate across the boundless sky, each scored by the comb-like tool that the artist would rake through paint. Characteristic of Mack’s early work, Der Himmel über Samarkand is ‘gently optical’ as it warmly envelopes the viewer (R. Smith, ‘3 Men and a Posse, Chasing Newness’, New York Times, October 10, 2014, p. C23). Light, for Mack, was the medium of choice, and his works aimed at another world.
Believing that light could unlock radical new potentials and inspired by the first voyages into outer space, in 1957, Mack along with the artist Otto Piene co-founded the international ZERO group; theirs was a search for a utopian synthesis of art and science. Within the earthly realm of the picture plane, Mack himself was greatly influenced by Lucio Fontana and his Spatialist manifesto, writing, ‘This incision ripped apart the curtain of the old temple of culture. This incision had more future in my sense of things. Fontana’s radical transgression had – quite early – unsettled me, and I soon recognized the significance of this violation of borders. Here a new space was opened, one in which new ideas found ‘space’, as it were. And Fontana’s claim to a future, to a change in the world and in the society living in it, is essentially just as idealistic as the aspirations of Yves Klein or Manzoni’ (H. Mack quoted in Licht der Zero-Zeit, exh. cat., Ludwig Museum, Cologne, 2009, p. 27).
If new dimensions could be uncovered in Fontana’s physical cuts, then Mack hoped the same could be found in his painterly rhythms and dynamisms. As a main outpost on the historic Silk Road trade route, Samarkand itself was once suggested such possibility, a flourishing nexus of cultural exchange. Location was fundamental to Mack’s work, and Der Himmel über Samarkand suggests new encounters within the infinite celestial. Rather than proposing any specific answer, Der Himmel über Samarkand poses only questions, its vibrating blue serving as a gateway to new temporal and physical dimensions, a painting teeming with light.
Believing that light could unlock radical new potentials and inspired by the first voyages into outer space, in 1957, Mack along with the artist Otto Piene co-founded the international ZERO group; theirs was a search for a utopian synthesis of art and science. Within the earthly realm of the picture plane, Mack himself was greatly influenced by Lucio Fontana and his Spatialist manifesto, writing, ‘This incision ripped apart the curtain of the old temple of culture. This incision had more future in my sense of things. Fontana’s radical transgression had – quite early – unsettled me, and I soon recognized the significance of this violation of borders. Here a new space was opened, one in which new ideas found ‘space’, as it were. And Fontana’s claim to a future, to a change in the world and in the society living in it, is essentially just as idealistic as the aspirations of Yves Klein or Manzoni’ (H. Mack quoted in Licht der Zero-Zeit, exh. cat., Ludwig Museum, Cologne, 2009, p. 27).
If new dimensions could be uncovered in Fontana’s physical cuts, then Mack hoped the same could be found in his painterly rhythms and dynamisms. As a main outpost on the historic Silk Road trade route, Samarkand itself was once suggested such possibility, a flourishing nexus of cultural exchange. Location was fundamental to Mack’s work, and Der Himmel über Samarkand suggests new encounters within the infinite celestial. Rather than proposing any specific answer, Der Himmel über Samarkand poses only questions, its vibrating blue serving as a gateway to new temporal and physical dimensions, a painting teeming with light.