Heinz Mack

Light, colour, movement. Heinz Mack's entire artistic oeuvre probably revolves around these three concepts. Impressed by all imaginable earthly impressions of light and colour, Mack tries to capture and reproduce them. He wants to make the viewer aware of the fullness of the colour spectrum. Our work shows this attempt, which he himself calls "colour chromatics" or "colour constellations". For Mack, light and colour cannot be separated from each other. That is why he does not simply depict colour, but wants to express light itself as colour. It is also of the utmost importance to him to visualise their relationship to one another. Mack shows spectral colours arranged horizontally on top of each other. The individual chromatic colours can be clearly distinguished from one another and yet each one runs visibly into the next. This impression is supported by fine vertical lines that run through the entire motif. They lend the picture an even greater dynamism. This ambivalence between the clearly divided and therefore static colour bars and the movement, based on the mixing of the colours and the vertical stripes, is fundamental to these works. The colour palette ranges from blue to green, via yellow and orange to red. The use of the spectral colours almost automatically creates a harmony, which is further enhanced by the different colour temperatures. The sensations evoked in the viewer in turn emphasise the concept of movement in the picture. Mack himself describes this effect as the vibration of colour.1 This even seems to detach the motif from its form beyond the edge of the picture.

1 Quoted from: Gabriele Holthuis (ed.), "Heinz Mack. The light of my colours", Dortmund 2015, p. 15.