Edited by herman de vries and henk peeters, the Dutch neo-avant-garde magazine nul = 0 had a brief but significant life. Part of the broader international post-war ZERO movement, it established dialogues with related groups and publications, including the Italian Azimut, the German ZERO movement, French Nouveau Réalisme, and Japanese Gutai.
The four issues published between 1961 and 1964 advocated an art grounded in objective reality, industrial materials, monochrome structures, and seriality, in opposition to traditional notions of artistic self-expression, emotional composition, and the myth of the bohemian artist. In keeping with this anti-hierarchical ethos, all names throughout the magazine were printed in lowercase.
Nul=0 No. 3 consists of the transcriptions of two lectures given in Amsterdam on March 30, 1962, by the German avant-garde architect Werner Ruhnau, accompanied by original haptic collages by herman de vries. The two small blue paper squares pay homage to Yves Klein, with whom Ruhnau had closely collaborated before Klein’s death later that year, in June 1962.