Heinz Butz – The Silent Cosmos

21.11.2026 – 18.04.2027 at Kunsthalle Augsburg im Glaspalast

Opening | 21.11. 2026 | 11 a.m.

“What we see is visual chamber music. Make no mistake: this understated approach possesses its own self-assurance, and its clarity sets it apart from much of what drowns it out in the public sphere.”
(Gottfried Boehm in the documentary about Heinz Butz: ‘Eremit am leeren Tisch’, 2019)

The Kunsthalle Augsburg in the Glaspalast invites you to a major retrospective exhibition of the work of Heinz Butz – the most comprehensive institutional presentation to date of this significant artist, who has long worked in obscurity. In an age where loud gestures often prevail, Butz’s work unfolds its impact in silence: precise, understated, and deeply compelling in its quiet power.

Born in 1925 in Dillingen an der Donau and raised in Augsburg, Butz studied at the Augsburg Art School and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He later served as a professor at both institutions until his retirement in 1991. His artistic practice did not emerge in the spotlight, but rather in an unobtrusive dialogue with nature, the body, and abstract forms.

The retrospective at H1 in the Kunsthalle Augsburg offers a fresh perspective on an artist who deliberately moved beyond established artistic movements and defied easy categorization. Starting with finely nuanced studies of nature and drawings, and extending to the quiet power of his paintings, Butz’s oeuvre develops into a unique cosmos of lines, planes, and forms that oscillate between figuration and abstraction. This complex cosmos is also evident in his pictorial objects and small sculptures, in which found objects from everyday life come together to form poetic, almost meditative structures.

In Augsburg, his life’s work can be experienced in thematic sequences: from early studies and drawings through pictorial objects of the 1960s to the abstract forms and objects created in his later years. The exhibition at the Kunsthalle Augsburg offers insights into the artistic development of a master who has gently shifted the perception of form and space over decades. Especially from today’s perspective, Heinz Butz’s work reveals a remarkable relevance: his concentrated visual language, reduced to the essentials, appears timeless and possesses the power to question viewing habits and open up new approaches to art. The Augsburg exhibition invites visitors to experience Heinz Butz’s sensitively composed visual language as a universe unto itself – a body of work that, through its restraint and inner precision, opens up a new perspective on art.

Under the patronage of H.R.H. Duke Franz of Bavaria.

The exhibition opens on Saturday, November 21, 2026, at 11 a.m. – You are cordially invited! No registration is required.