Thoughtful and poetic distillation characterise this inspiring collection of Günther Komnick’s work, a selection that spans a lifetime of heartfelt engagement with our world and those who inhabit it.
     This selection obviously reflects a lifelong visual rapport with mood, colour, shapes and composition. Indeed, in the ink portrait sketches, which make up the greater part of this miscellany, there is a playfulness, an empathy and a strong identification with the subject.
     One sees in the earlier works of Komnick, a superb technical mastery of his chosen medium, which is not unlike the progression from say a Bach prelude to Jazz, that is to say an improvisatory quality that quietly and subtly displays a self-assurance through which the personalities depicted come to the fore in all their warmth and travails.

     Komnick also ventures into the abstract and into the biographical. His drawings depicting the trauma of the flight from East Prussia at the end of World War II are powerful, such as the one On the run from the Russian army – 1945. The horses, cart and people disappear into the frozen sea, a scene replicated so many times when the inhabitants had to make their way to westwards. His depiction of the utter dejection of German POWs making their way eastwards to Siberia, also is a further distillation of everlasting memories thus engraved.
     Komnick’s 1966 painting of the Bokaap is similarly evocative, as is the abstract work Road Workers, from the same year.
     A charming addition to this highly personalised collection are the book illustrations for Afrikaans children’s books, which vie with the exquisitely fine drawings of Goethe and Schiller. Added to these are the characterful and keenly observed sketches of random characters who inhabit the denizens of Cape Town – their souls seem to jump out at you, as if Komnick has "read” his subjects along with their inner secrets.
     An eminently rewarding journey into history and a personal biography, this enchanting collection will be a treasure for life.