The exhibition of GĂĽnter Grass ‘The Shadow’ is one of the main events of Gdańsk celebration of 200th anniversary of Hans Christian Andersen’s birth. A year ago the Nobel Prize winner was asked by the Danish Queen Margrethe II to illustrate some of Andersen’s fairytales. During five months of work Grass created 97 lithographies. They were published in the book “The shadow – Andersen’s fairytales through the eyes of GĂĽnter Grass”. The author received Hans Christian Andersen’s award for the book this year. 30 of these illustrations are presented at the exhibition in Gdansk. Also 10 lithographies from the new cycle “Last Dances” and 8 sculptures “Dancing Couples” is shown. It is worth pointing out that his sculptures are presented in Poland for the first time. Graphic works of GĂĽnter Grass are well-known to the Gdańsk audience .
The opening of the exhibition - 12 May at 7 p.m. in the Gallery of the BSCC. Meeting with the Author - Old Town Hall, 16 June 2005 at 8.30 p.m.

GĂĽnter Grass is one of the most outstanding contemporary German writers and the Nobel Prize winner. He was born in 1927 in Gdansk. His mother was Kashubian, his father German. After the Second World War Grass moved to Western Berlin. He is a sculptor by education; he finished artistic studies in Duesseldorf and Berlin For 20 years he was a member of the literary group 47– a circle of Western German, Austrian and Swiss writers who were united by socially engaged literature and the protest against fascism. Grass became famous in 1959 with the novel ‘The Tin Drum’, which was censored and published in Poland only in 1984. Gdansk and Poland have a special place in his works. He is the author of so called ‘Gdansk trilogy’ – ‘The Tin Drum’, ‘Cat and Mouse’ and ‘Dog Years’. His other well-known works are: ‘The Diary of a Snail’, ‘The Rat’ and ‘The Call of the Toad', the sarcastic tale about Polish-German reconciliation. In 1995 he published the novel ‘A Wide Field’. GĂĽnter Grass has received a lot of awards, among others Sonning Prize in 1996 awarded by the University in Copenhagen for contribution to European culture. Last year he got Fritz Bauer prize from Humanistic Union, the oldest German organization in defence of civil rights.

The exhibition takes place within the Year of Andersen in Gdańsk.

Admission free