Herbert Zangs German, 1924-2003

After service in the armed forces Zangs (b. 1924 – d. 2003 Krefeld, Germany) began to study at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1945 and later discovered abstract art in 1951 during a visit to Paris. He developed his own style of working with found objects in 1952 when his white works were born. The Whitenings, echoing Lucio Fontana’s 1946 White Manifesto, explore the movement of colour and form within a spatial structure, influenced by the transformative effect of snow.

With the monochrome white works and the series of Relief-Paintings titled Vibrations, Zangs became closer to the ZERO movement, which proclaimed an artistic renewal based on themes of light and movement. Freed from all content and function, every work is the object of its process, both painting and object, experimenting with marks made by whips and windscreen wipers.

Zangs has participated in many international exhibitions including in 1995 an important personal exhibition held by the Fondation Cartier, Paris.