This catalogue of a recent exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, a revisiting of the work of the Dutch Zero Movement in the sixties, is a book whose design is in perfect harmony with its subject.
Everything is consistently in black and white, referring back to a past in black-and-white photographs without descending into historicism. This is a past avant-garde refreshed and modern, and now once more pushed into the limelight. The uncompromising design perfectly reflects the recalcitrance of the Nul movement, its striving for objectivity and its rejection of individual expression.
Also excellent is the book’s clear layout, which has been designed with a fine sense of rhythm: longer essays in black on white, shorter items in white on black, interspersed with a chronological photographic overview and, to end with, a series of interviews. And to wrap it all up, the white paper of front cover and flap is dominated by a giant cut-out zero.