Peter Schnürpel completed his art education in the nineteen-sixties at the famous Leipzig University of the Arts. His early sketches regarding the world of sport already showed his ability to go beyond the narrow subject matter and make universal statements. His figures represent exclamations or a lapsing into silence, are motionless or driven by high levels of dynamism. Furthermore, he makes expert use of light and dark contrasts, of making an illuminated form emerge out of the dark, of figures disappearing into the shadows, of the flashing of a ray of hope in the distance. For the first time the pages of this book bring together graphics that use a range of techniques (etching, serigraphy, lithography) and set them against later overpaintings. They show the artist’s striving to find universal ways of expressing existential aspects of life, such as love and happiness, joy and sorrow, finiteness and death.