The Dutch Nul Group, which consisted of Armando (1929-2018), Jan Henderikse (b. 1937), Henk Peeters (1925-2013) and Jan Schoonhoven (1914-1994), manifested itself in form and name in 1961. On 1 April 1961, a stone's throw from the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum, Galerie 201 organized the ‘Internationale tentoonstelling van NIETS’ ('International Exhibition of NOTHING’). The 'Manifest tegen niets' ('Manifesto against Nothing') and 'Einde' ('Ending'), a pamphlet published at the same time, were among the first activities of the Nul group.'The Manifest tegen niets' was signed by Armando, Bazon Brock, Jan_Henderikse, Arthur_Køpcke, Carl Laszlo, Silvano Lora, Piero_Manzoni, Christian_Megert, Onorio, Henk_Peeters and Jan_Schoonhoven; the pamphlet 'Einde' by Armando, Bazon Brock, Jan Henderikse, Arthur Køpcke, Silvano Lora, Piero_Manzoni, Christian Megert, Henk Peeters and Jan Schoonhoven. The manifesto and the pamphlet were sent in the form of an invitation to the 'Internationale tentoonstelling van NIETS' in the Amsterdam Galerie 207, April 1961. The 'Manifest tegen niets' was based on a publication of the same name by Carl Laszlo (Basel, 1960), also publisher of the influential Swiss magazine Panderma. ‘We need art like we need a hole in the head,’ the pamphlet 'Einde' states; ‘From now on the undersigned pledge to work to disband art circles and close down exhibition facilities, which can then finally be put to worthier use.’ 'Einde', pamphlet, 1 April 1961' The 'Einde' pamphlet imagines a new beginning, as Armando and Henk Peeters had already proclaimed in texts written several years earlier for the Dutch Informals.Armando had published his texts 'Credo 1' and 'Credo 2' in 1958 and 1959, respectively. Henk Peeters, 'Vuil aan de lucht', published in Nederlandse Informele Groep, ex. cat. (Arnhem: self-publication, 1959), no page numbers. Peeters text was published at the occasion of the exhibition 'Nederlandse Informele Groep' at the Nijmegen Besiendershuys, July 4–20, 1959. For how Peeters’ early artist’s texts were received, see also: Jonneke Jobse, 'Houdt links!,' in: Jonneke Jobse and Marga van Mechelen (eds.), Echt Peeters. Henk Peeters, realist, avant-gardist (Wezep: Uitgeverij de Kunst, 2011), 33-41.
Roots of Nul: The Dutch Informal Group The Dutch Informal Group, preceding the formation of the Nul group, was founded in 1958.Also Dutch artists Fred Sieger (1902-1999) and Rik Jager (1933) participated in exhibitions of the Dutch Informal Group. Bram_Bogart (1921-2012) only took part in the very first exhibition, at the refectory of the Delft University, in 1958. Kees_van_Bohemen (1928-1985) left the group in February 1961. See also: Franck Gribling, Informele Kunst in Belgie en Nederland 1955-'60, exhibit. cat. (The Hague: Gemeentemuseum/Antwerp, Koninklijk Paleis voor Schone Kunsten, 1983), 16. Until early 1961 its members showed works in oils or pigments mixed with plaster and sand, usually on panels, linen or jute. The group replaced the expression of emotions in paint with an attempt at an absence of 'personal signature', resulting in colourless and monochrome works virtually devoid of form or composition. In 1958 Henk Peeters saw the work of Lucio Fontana and Alberto Burri for the first time, at the Venice Biennale. Fontana's escape ‘from the prison of the flat surface’ by piercing or slicing up the canvas and Burri's material, burnt plastic, made a big impression on him.Antoon Melissen, 'Nul = 0. The Dutch avant-garde of the 1960s in a European Context', in: Colin Huizing and Tijs Visser, eds., The Dutch Nul Group in an International Context, (Rotterdam: nai010 Publishers, 2010), 13-14. Burri and Fontana played a vital role in the transition from paint on canvas or panel to the use of industrial materials and the abandonment of the flat surface. Barely a year later, in 1959, Henk Peeters burned two rows of holes in a painting, 1959-03, and Armando set nails in the ends of a panel, Espace Criminal (10 zwarte spijkers op zwart; 10 Black Nails on Black). These works marked a transitional phase from the informal painting to Nul work; they are iconoclastic intermediate steps Peeters and Armando were taking on their new path.Antoon Melissen, ed., Armando. Between Knowing and Understanding, (Rotterdam: nai010 Publishers, 2015), 66-68. Henderikse also turned his back on painting in 1959, with assemblages of everyday objects, and toward 1960 Schoonhoven strived, in frozen, increasingly whiter reliefs, ‘by avoiding intentional form . . . for a much greater organic reality of the artificial in and of itself.’ These are works that, according to Schoonhoven, offer the possibility ‘to arrive at [an] objectively neutral expression of the generally applicable.’Jan Schoonhoven, untitled text, 1960. Published at the occasion of the first exhibition of the Dutch Informal Group outside the Netherlands, at Galerie Gunar, Düsseldorf. In: Nederlandse Informele Groep, brochure, 1960, no page numbers.
The International Context Armando, Jan Henderikse, Henk Peeters and Jan Schoonhoven first exhibited their new, non-painting work at the ‘Internationale Malerei 1960-61’ exhibition in Wolframs-Eschenbach, Germany.Bram Bogart and Kees van Bohemen also took part in this exhibition. See Het Vaderland, 8 March 1961 The first issue of the new group's internationally oriented ‘house organ’, the journal Revue nul = 0, edited by Armando, Henk Peeters and Herman de Vries, came out in November 1961.nul = 0. tijdschrift voor de nieuwe konseptie in de beeldende kunst, series 1, no. 1 (November 1961). The first issue of the magazine nul = 0 was edited by Armando, Henk Peeters and Herman de Vries and published in French and German. Another three issues would follow; number two in 1963 without Armando as editor, and numbers three and four in 1963-1964, under the slightly altered title revue nul = 0, with Herman de Vries as the sole editor. With contributions by artists who a year later would take part in the first Nul exhibition at the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum,'Nul', March 9–26, 1962, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Participating artists were Armando, Bernard_Aubertin, Pol_Bury, Enrico_Castellani, Dadamaino, Piero_Dorazio, Lucio_Fontana, Hermann_Goepfert, Hans_Haacke, Jan_Henderikse, Oskar_Holweck, Yayoi_Kusama, Francesco_Lo_Savio, Heinz_Mack, Piero_Manzoni, Almir_Mavignier, Christian_Megert, Henk_Peeters, Otto_Piene, Uli_Pohl, Jan_Schoonhoven, Günther_Uecker, Jef_Verheyen and Herman_de_Vries. Henk_Peeters played a guiding role in the initiation and organization of the exhibition. Although Herman de Vries had not co-signed manifestoes and pamphlets drawn up by Armando and Henk Peeters, nor taken part in the exhibitions under the flag of the Nederlandse Informele Groep, prior to the formation of the Nul Group in 1961, his work was nonetheless an important component of the Dutch presentation in the 1962-exhibition Nul, in a gallery together with Henderikse, Peeters and Schoonhoven. the journal presented a good overview of the main themes of the international ZERO movement, which emerged around the journal ZERO, published in 1958 and 1961 by German artists Heinz Mack en Otto Piene.The three issues of the ZERO journal were published in April 1958, October 1958 and July 1961. The movement found sympathizers in countries like Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and Venezuela. Since the late 1950s the Dutchmen had established close ties with the German Zero group led by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene (Günther Uecker joined the group in 1961) and the Japanese group Gutai, as well as with Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani, the French Nouveau Réaliste Yves Klein and Japan's Yayoi Kusama.
The Identity of Nul
Nul's pragmatism, its sober approach to the world, to the product of art, to being an artist and to reality, is expressed in the formal characteristics of its works, but also in its everyday practice, in the way works were created and exhibited, the way artists operated and presented themselves. The Nul artists aimed to shed the stereotyped image of the bohemian in a painting smock and had a fresh attitude toward the consumer society, quite at odds with the artistic scene of the early 1960s. Nul was a search for new relationships between art and reality, with at its base the rejection of uniqueness, authenticity and decorative attractiveness in the traditional sense of the word. The group reduced the multi-coloured to the monochrome and opted for repetition, seriality and the directness of everyday materials and objects, in use and effect. Even its conceptual aspect, the splitting of thought and action, of conception, production as well as the possibility of repeat production was, in the footsteps of Marcel Duchamp, linked to a different interpretation of ideas like craftsmanship and expertise. At the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum in 1962, for instance, Armando and Jan Henderikse left the setting up of their installations to museum staff, and in 1965, at Peeters's request, Yayoi Kusama produced a work in his material, card sliver, a spun synthetic fibre. ‘The process of creation is . . . completely unimportant and uninteresting; a machine can do it,’ Peeters said. ‘The personal element lies in the idea and no longer in the manufacture.’Antoon Melissen, (see note 5), 16. The identity of the Dutch Nul group navigated between a cheerful orientation toward the world of the everyday and the cool sobriety of the serial monochrome. Whereas the German Zero artists were still ‘painting’ with the elements, with the effects of fire, light, shadow, movement and reflection, the Nul artist preferred to let reality speak for itself by isolating it, usually in raw form. Among the Dutchmen, only Henk Peeters worked with the elements water and fire – although Peeters saw his ‘pyrographs’, soot and scorch marks on various surfaces, as a typically Nul solution to the elimination of any excessively personal element: to work with the fickleness of a flame is ‘. . . to let go of the work and to become the spectator of a self-directed performance.’Henk Peeters, untitled contribution to the catalogue Nul negentienhonderd vijf en zestig, part II, no page numbers. This catalogue accompanied the second large scale ZERO exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, spring 1965. In terms of form, Peeters's tactile cotton balls, whether on a canvas or on a wall as a three-dimensional installation, are balanced on the cusp between Nul and the German Zero. 'It is not our job to educate, any more than it is our job to convey messages,’ said Piero Manzoni in 1960.Germano Celant, Piero Manzoni, ex. cat., (Milan: Charta/London: Serpentine Gallery, 1998), 271. This might as easily have been a statement by Henk Peeters, by Jan Henderikse and even by the German Zero group. And yet the sober-minded outlook of the Dutchmen distinguished itself from the German Zero. ‘Yes, I dream of a better world. Should I dream of a worse?’ wrote Otto Piene in ‘Paths to Paradise’ in 1961.Otto Piene, 'Paths to Paradise (Wege zum Paradies), in: Heinz Mack and Otto Piene (eds.), ZERO, Cambridge (MA)/London: MIT Press, 1973), 146. With their clear-eyed view of reality, the members of Nul were not dreaming of the world, neither a better nor a worse, and certainly not of ‘paths to paradise’. During the Nul period, radicalism and a sincerely felt admiration for what was new and contemporary went hand in hand; nimble provocation is what Nul seemed to have a patent on.
The Monochrome