Current Exhibition

Günter Grass
Trouvailles for the non-reader

Hirschwirtscheuer, Künzelsau

January 30, 2025 to Winter 2025

Wednesday to Sunday, Public Holidays: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Mostly renowned for his literary work as a poet, novelist and playwright, the Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass (1927-2015) produced a significant body of work of prints, drawings, watercolors and sculpture. One very special aspect of his work, which brings to light his double talent as a writer and visual artist are his artist’s books. In collaboration with his publisher, these books were largely designed by Günter Grass himself.

Fundsachen für Nichtleser (Trouvailles for the non-reader), published in 1997 is an artist’s book based on 116 watercolors, which are now part of the Würth Collection. It is a diary in which images and text are on equal terms. The watercolors in this exhibition have been produced during the course of one year on an island in Denmark and in Portugal. It is however not a diary in its strictest sense. Rather than recording the events of any given day, Grass allows us to accompany him while his thoughts and recollections meander over the course of that year. We are invited to follow the artist to these locations, see the things and surroundings he saw and captured and engage with his musings that accompany the works.

Grass himself deemed his visual and literary oeuvre to be of equal significance as he states in his Werkstattbericht (workshop report) of 2004. Considering the distinction between writing and drawing as academic and forced, for him, there was no either or. The artist’s books, for which these watercolors form the basis, are an example of cross referencing, juxtaposition and creative exchange between both art forms. This synthesis of short laconic texts, comprising of between four and eleven lines, written with the same brush as was used for the image, was invented by Grass towards the end of his life.

Fundsachen für Nichtleser (Trouvailles for the non-reader), the first of these artist’s books, was created in 1997 on the basis of 116 watercolors that are now in the possession of the Würth Collection. His watercolor cycle My Century, was completed two years later and is the basis of another artist’s book.The watercolors are not to be understood as illustration of the texts, just as the brief lines are not intended to be captions or explanations. Rather, word and image, language and color structure are to be perceived together. They complement each other and, in harmony, form a completely new art form in which words are mixed with watercolors.

The artist conceived the term Aquadichte to describe his new art form, a wordplay to express the equitable amalgam of both, watercolor and poetry.

Due to Grass’ long-standing friendship with the collector Reinhold Würth it also found its way into the Würth Collection, which preserves a total of 668 works by the artist, including drawings and sculptures. To mark the 100th birthday of Günter Grass in 2027, a major exhibition of his work is planned at Museum Würth in Künzelsau.