Ever since the early 1970s, Werner von Mutzenbecher has numbered among the most important protagonists of the cultural scene in Basel: not only as an artist whose works were presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions and are included in many Swiss collections, but also both as a teacher for many years at the Schule für Gestaltung Basel and through his interim directorship of the Kunsthalle Basel during the 1970s. For many decades, his painterly cosmos has been the world around him, with his oeuvre consisting of its abstraction and interpretation in a realization that can variously be figurative, abstract, or also concrete. The artistic expression can also flow into language, literature, video, Super8 or 16mm film. It is here that is to be found the key to the complexity of his oeuvre and hence to the multiplicity of media which Mutzenbecher knows how to activate.
The present monograph was created on the occasion of his solo exhibition at the Kunsthaus Baselland and offers for the first time a comprehensive overview of his extensive artistic production, discussed by colleagues and authors from different areas such as film, video, literature, art history, etc. An illustrious polyphony to a life in pictures.