Zero not only significantly influenced and revolutionised art in the period around 1960, but also the art of the postwar moderns as a whole. Zero was a loose international grouping - not a 'group' with uniform stylistic features and manifesto-like aims. It developed between 1958 and 1962 and was concentrated mainly in Germany, France, Holland and Italy. In retrospect, the Germans Heinz Mack and Otto Piene are regarded as the founders and spiritual initiators of Zero, along with Yves Klein. They met for the first time in 1957 in the Galerie Schmela in Dusseldorf, where Yves Klein's sensational "Blue Epoch" pictures were being shown. At the heart of this book are the Dusseldorf protagonists Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker, along with around twenty artists from their wider circle who were also among the first to be involved in the Zero movement. Using examples of pathbreaking exhibitions, publications and projects, well-known experts on the subject reconstruct the radical new artistic orientation in Germany and - with the help of new works by the artists who are still living - build a bridge from today back to the years around 1960 when it all began.