Writing or image? Handwriting as a central, significant and currently very topical stylistic device. Beautiful or outrageous – legible and enigmatic. This book ‘Peter Krüll – bilderschreiben’ presents more than 150 selected exhibits by artists and designers. The collection is fascinating to look at and shows how complex the topic of “handwriting” or the “written” image is.

“Writing is the painting of words,” Ben Vautier once said. Handwriting has long been, and is once again, a central stylistic device in art and design. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes outrageous – legible as well as enigmatic.

The book ‘Peter Krüll – bilderschreiben,’ which is in color throughout and of high quality, brings together more than 150 works by artists, designers and students on the subject of the “written” image. The professor of typography and graphic design has compiled a representative selection of works with great skill and extensive knowledge, and in doing so has unearthed treasures by well-known artists, among others, which are not necessarily widely known as famous works of the same.

Paul Klee, Joseph Beuys, Jean Tinguely or Antoni Tàpies used handwriting as an artistic element in works. Robert Rauschenberg wrote the logo for the “Moderna Museet” in Stockholm; the designer duo Vier5 from Paris surprised us at Documenta 12 with a handwritten signage system. Many posters by the designers Grapus, Niklaus Troxler, Stefan Sagmeister or Fons Hickmann, among others, have become famous through their handwriting. Exceptional and remarkable are also the projects of word drawings or word paintings of “Asemic Writing”. Calligraphy is not only an art with a long and varied tradition worldwide, but is also used in visual poetry or visual music, as the works of Gerhard Rühm or John Cage show. And of course there are plenty of magazines, books, CD’s or record covers that have been uniquely designed using handwritten words.