Still available at: amazon.com

This book presents, for the first time, the whole of Günther Uecker’s “autobiographical drawings” cycle. Uecker is a famous painter, creator of books, graphic artist, sculptor, and object artist who has set new standards in many artistic fields. He is best known for his relief paintings created from nails. Uecker’s art has always responded to major contemporary themes—not as an agitator or in a partisan manner, but with a sense of physical pain, as he seeks to express in his art the rage and joy inspired in him by events. What is less well-known is that over the past 40 years he has painted 60 pictures—all in the 3 x 3 metres format—that reflect his own life. He describes these written pictures thus: I am porous, and retain nothing. Everything flows through me. These are notes made not only with brushes, pens and pencils, but with my hands and feet as well. The process of making them was almost like dancing. But it was also a strict discipline, arising from the need to put things in rows, to trace linear developments, to fence off parts of the world with grilles and barricades because its magnitude is too much to bear.