(born in Lollar, Hessen 1931)
Großes Farblicht, 1994, chromatic constellation, signed, dated on the reverse mack 94 with directional arrow, titled on the stretcher, acrylic on canvas, 180 x 150 cm, artist frame

Certificate:
Atelier Mack, Mönchengladbach, April 2021, signed by the artist

Literatur:
Mack. Malerei/Painting 1991–2011, B. Kühlen Verlag, 2011,
cat.-no. 2, illu. p. 37

Provenance:
Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia - acquired directly from the artist

“The identity of light and colour visible in the spectrum,
is the subject of my painting - it is its only subject.”
Heinz Mack

"I can't live without colour, it means beauty, sensuality and energy," Heinz Mack told his audience at the exhibition opening celebrating his 90th birthday at the Düsseldorf Kunstpalast in spring 2021. In his paintings, the artist tries to capture and shape light in the form of colour. " If one were forced to assign a concept to an artist from which his work could ultimately be interpreted and explained, then in [...] Heinz Mack's case it would definitely be light."1 Light is the main subject in Mack's artistic work. The examination of the colour spectrum that is produced when light is refracted is characteristic of the artist's work and has been an important component of his oeuvre since the 1960s.
The painting "Großes Farblicht" (Large Coloured Light) from 1994 shows a large coloured rhombus on a white background on a rectangular, untreated canvas. The work primarily explores the interaction of light, colour and form. "In Mack's chromatic paintings, forms have the significance of a rhythmic boundary within which light appears as colour."2

The artist combines the cool colours blue and green in the upper area with the warm colours yellow and orange in the lower area. The selected colours are part of the so-called spectral colours. Spectral colours are the resulting colour perception when white light is prismatically split. They symbolise invisible light, which, under certain conditions, breaks down into the colours red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet and thus becomes visible to the human eye.

The four colours chosen by Heinz Mack contrast with each other. They are not clearly demarcated from one another, but flow into each other. The corners and edges of the individual colour fields dissolve into soft lines and contours, the geometric shapes blur into one large colour surface and upon closer inspection the individual colour gradations are clearly visible. The artist himself sees the colours as dynamic movements, describing the visual relationships between them with terms such as "vibration" and "oscillation". 3

The main subject of the work "Großes Farblicht" is therefore not colour in general, but light and its effect in the form of colour. The colours of the painting appear like a prism-like refraction of light on a white background and their power is thus maximised.

1 Exhibition catalogue Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, Mack, kinetics, Düsseldorf 2011, p. 196.

2 Heinz Mack, Malerei, www.mack-kunst.com/de/Malerei.htm (27.04.2021).