Herbert Zangs and Hubert Berke

With the exhibition "Herbert Zangs and Hubert Berke - Reality is the Fantastic", the Kunsthalle
Kunsthalle Schweinfurt (Schweinfurt Art Gallery) consistently continues its programmatic focus on the diversity of informal
trends in German post-war art.

Herbert Zangs (1924-2003) was already approaching Art Informel, monochrome and object art from the early 1950s. He developed various pictorial forms, from collage and material assemblages to pictorial objects. Zangs was particularly fascinated by the different possibilities of legibility and the tipping effect from one image category to another.
With his "weldings" of found objects and everyday things, Zangs broke the boundaries of abstract and informal art and, with his own powerful creative process, breathed new life into the repeatedly apostrophised "zero point" of painting. Despite the parallels to the ZERO artists, he felt more connected to the "New Realists". He can be considered a pioneer of monochrome and the serial method of working. In 1977, Zangs exhibited his "Anti-Books" at documenta 6. From then on, he explored "seriality" in series of works and the combination of different series such as folds, brushwork, bubble paintings and computer drawings, thus realising surprising pictorial solutions.

Zangs' work is presented in dialogue with several works by Hubert Berke (1908-1979). With his sculptures and assemblages, Berke developed his very own subversive, often humorous vocabulary. His imaginative figurines - goddesses, ghosts, animal-like creatures - open up a playful, almost fairytale-like dimension within the informal. Hubert Berke's contribution to informal painting has already been comprehensively honoured with a solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle in 2021.

The presentation invites visitors to understand the apparent opposites of excess and reduction, concept and improvisation, seriousness and irony as productive fields of tension within German post-war art - and to experience reality as something fantastic.

Last edited on 09.10.2025