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until 04.09. | #4741ARTatBerlin | Galerie feinart berlin shows from 09. August 2025 a Solo-exhibition by the artist Günter Schöllkopf.
The graphic work of Günter Schöllkopf, born in Stuttgart in 1935, conveys the impression of an inquisitive, politically committed artist and thinker with a talent for etchings and a bubbling imagination. He received private tuition from Max Ackermann at the age of ten and completed his studies at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart at the age of 22. When he died at the age of 44, he left behind a total of around 1,000 works dealing with themes from world literature, music, history and politics.
Guenter Schoellkopf, Helden, 34.3 x 49cm, 1953, ©feinartberlin
On display in the exhibition are works from the cycles on Balzac, Don Quixote, François Villon, ancient myths and fairy tales as well as three of his rare paintings. Behind the depiction of the themes to which the cycles are dedicated, a proliferating root system of references can be discovered that connects all the pictures, all the figures. Schöllkopf is not interested in confirming predetermined orders and interpretations, let alone illustrating them. Instead, in his kaleidoscopic, ambiguous pictorial worlds, he wanted to achieve collective links between statements that liberate thinking from pluses and minuses, from authorities and ideologies.
Günter Schöllkopf — Louenge à la cour (Zu François Villon), Radierung, Druckplatte 24,8 x 29,6cm, 1958, 8/8 ©feinartberlin
Schöllkopf produced the early cycles such as Zu Balzac and Ost-West at the age of 17, a young man full of drive, a challenging spirit, rebelling against traditional structures and struggling with inner contradictions. He found his language in printmaking and drawing, creating a cosmos of images for his knowledge and thinking – especially in etching: “I am a man of metal”, he wrote in his diaries (German Literature Archive Marbach Collection).
Günter Schöllkopf, Milchsee, 15.7 x 30.5 cm, ©feinartberlin
Schöllkopf, an ironist and a passionate poker player, had a sense for the mirages of owls, odysseys and fool’s games, which in his graphic works bubble along in “intoxicating capers and in his later work flow into the broad and calmly flowing stream of his melancholy, cheerful, wistfully ironic, logically enigmatic images from the lives of famous men and women. Taken together, all the individual works illustrate Schöllkopf’s cultural analysis and cultural disruption. His stories from history turn the usual ways of seeing and thinking upside down (idealism), on their feet (materialism) and on the self (desire economy).
“I’m a citoyen, I make a living, I eat and drink, I fly and I want everything.” (Schöllkopf 1978)
Opening: Saturday, 09. August 2025, 6 – 9 pm. | 7 pm. Official greeting
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 09. August until Thursday 04. September 2025
To the gallery
Title image caption: Günter Schöllkopf, Mein Lebensbaum, 45 x 27cm, 1959, ©feinartberlin
Exhibition Günter Schöllkopf – Galerie feinart berlin | Zeitgenössische Kunst Berlin – Contemporary Art – Ausstellungen Berlin Galerien | ART at Berlin
