People People 2 (Sky Art VIII) from the portfolio Sky Art

Otto Piene was a German artist and founder of the Zero movement, which emerged in postwar Düsseldorf as a radical rejection of gestural abstraction and war-inflected expressionism. Working primarily with light, smoke, and kinetic forms, he created immersive environments and performances that dematerialized the art object itself. His light ballets and sky events transformed industrial and natural spaces into fields of perception, while his pneumatic and kinetic sculptures explored movement as a sculptural material. Piene's practice extended from gallery installations to monumental public works, establishing light and ephemeral phenomena as central to postwar artistic inquiry.

Laasphe, Germany