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When Lucio Fontana exhibited two paintings from his then brand-new 'tagli' series at documenta II in 1959, it caused quite a stir. The ZERO artists Otto Piene (born 1928) and Heinz Mack (born 1931), who were at the beginning of their careers at the time, and the twenty-year-old Franz Erhard Walther (born 1939) reported that the two cut-out pictures were perceived as a provocation and were the subject of intense debate:

"Upstairs I see medium formats on a wall: one monochrome white, one turquoise. The artist had cut into the canvas with a knife and roughly painted over a cut in the turquoise painting with gold bronze. I was completely baffled. Although I didn't really know why, I thought it was great. The provocative moment, of course, was that I'd never seen anything like it before. Then I thought: "Well, that's what young artists are doing today," but then I read: "Lucio Fontana, born in 1899". He's 60 years old, but it's strange. I'll never forget it. I took it seriously because it was done by an experienced man. Not a young artist trying something out. That gave me the idea that the classical pictorial space no longer exists".

Since the 1960s, Franz Erhard Walther's unusual objects and conceptual works have transformed classical art and its reception by the public. An example of Walther's approach is the 1963 Wuppertaler Duftobjekt (Wuppertal Scent Object), his first work to be sold, which consists of a found piece of mattress covered in nettle. It was originally designed to be used by squeezing the cushion to release the scent through a marked hole. Both the act of squeezing and the real space in which the scent spreads became integral parts of the work. His fellow students Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Joseph Beuys showed little understanding for such unusual objects, which were neither painting nor sculpture. On the other hand, he was encouraged by the ZERO artists Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, who were also working on leaving the familiar realm of traditional art genres.
Unfortunately, for conservation reasons, it is no longer possible to actively use the scented object today. But even in theory, the original idea remains: Pressing on the cushion to release the scent and the space created by doing so are essential elements that define the artwork.