Author Archives: Gabriele Walter

Art gift book ‘Art Château’

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art chateau vernissage with bordeau wine

Vernissage imaginaire with Bordeaux Wine

Book series LOUNGE 1 – volume I

Editor: Gabriele Walter

A festive occasion like an anniversary or a vernissage is the perfect opportunity to enjoy a fine wine. This gave us the idea to create a series of books called “Art Château” celebrating the special relationship between wine and art. Wine as a cultural treasure goes far beyond drinking. Wine cannot be considered a muse, it is however, said that only those who value art, poetry, and music, can truly treasure it. .

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Vernissage with Bordeaux Wine – Art, Wine, Poetry, and Music

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Excerpts from the book “Art Château” – vol. 1

Vernissage imaginaire – Invitation to the Opening

A festive occasion like an anniversary or a vernissage is the perfect opportunity to enjoy a fine wine. This gave us the idea to create a series of books called “Art Château” celebrating the special relationship between wine and art. Without question, wine stimulates the imagination – and the exchange of thoughts. We should only pay serious attention, however, to the truly fine wines. The joy of winetasting should not be the result of alcohol. Drinking wine is not about making life fade into the distance – even if this aspect of it tends to be glorified in volumes of brilliant poetry. Wine as a cultural treasure goes far beyond drinking, and many of the landscapes where the grapes are grown enchant us with their quaint historical appeal.

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Table Music by Johann Sebastian Bach

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Drinking wine is a sensual journey, and listening to music is said to make it even more enjoyable. Even the grapes themselves love music – as they ripen, they prefer the great symphonies of Beethoven or Mahler, while fermentation makes them long for sacred vocal music and Baroque pieces. Yes – plants are sentient beings, too! While the wine bills of famous composers often mark them as sensual personalities, wine is not the most common subject in classical music.

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From the Winemakers’ Idyll of St. Emilion to the Prehistoric Splendor of Lascaux

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Excerpts from the book “Art Château – vol. 1 – Vernissage with Bordeau Wine”

St. Emilion – surrounded by a medieval city wall, even the name of this quaint little town in the Bordeaux wine region breathes spiritual inspiration. Immediately upon entering the town, the stunning ruins of a former Benedictine monastery will tempt visitors to take pictures. The old Franciscan monastery with its gothic cloister with its contemplative combination of ruins and elysian vineyards is another eyecatcher. Like all winemakers around here, the inhabitants bless every path most generously with cases of fine wine. The magic aura of the place will make visitors float through the town’s medieval alleyways. Not a single modern building will disturb their historic sojourn.

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Gift book “Congratulations! – Herzliche Glückwünsche!”

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Congratulations! - gift book with flowers and artworks

Relaxing with Flowers, Colors, Poetry and Art

Book series LOUNGE 1 – volume I

Editor: Gabriele Walter

Flowers are a gift for every occasion. With gorgeous blossoms, art, and rainbow colors in panoramic format, this unusual gift book will take you on a soothing trip to deep relaxation. The printed flower bouquet was created with love to bring joy to your loved ones. Consciously experience the colors and shapes of the flowers as you breathe them in through your eyes like healing scents.

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Excellent Art 2022 – Exzellente Kunst 2022 – vol. 3

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Book series LOUNGE 3 – volume III

Editor: Gabriele Walter

This art and gift book introduces 47 selected artists from 23 countries around the globe. The interpretations focus mainly on the visible, specific side of paintings, sculptures, and art objects mostly leaving out aspects related to the artists’ résumés. To learn more about the artists, please refer to their respective websites. The book invites art lovers to connect with the artworks themselves. Based on the concept behind Enter-into-Art, feel free to pick a painting, mindfully dwell on it following our instructions for meditative art observation, and relax.

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Voices of the Sea: From Felix Mendelssohn to Claude Debussy

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Excerpts from the book “Excellent Art 2022 – vol. 3”

Most pieces of classical music featuring the sea are inspired by composers being shipwrecked, and exhibit a pompous, dynamic style of orchestration. Richard Wagner’s Flying Dutchman and Hector Berlioz’s Le Corsaire are two such examples. In my selection for this book, however, I have chosen to focus on works expressing the beauty and the lyrical element of the sea with its poetic range of sounds.

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Art gift book “Animal Worlds of Art – Tierwelten der Kunst”

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In Memory of St. Francis of Assisi

Book series LOUNGE 2 – volume VI

Editor: Gabriele Walter

St. Francis of Assisi’s considerable impact on art and poetry cannot be questioned. His deeply felt connection with nature exerts a special pull on free-thinking people and functions as a bulwark against irrational zeitgeist and cultural decline. At the occasion of his 840th birthday, this idea brought together 60 artists from 24 countries to honor the saint’s love of animals with contemporary imagery.

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St. Francis – and Animals in Art History

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Excerpts from the book “Animal Worlds of Art”

St. Francis of Assisi’s considerable impact on art and poetry cannot be questioned. His deeply felt connection with nature exerts a special pull on free-thinking people and functions as a bulwark against irrational zeitgeist and cultural decline.

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Art gift book “Fairytale Art for Mozart – Märchenhafte Kunst für Mozart”

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Book series LOUNGE 2 – volume IV

Editor: Gabriele Walter

Fairy tales used to be orally transmitted and kept changing in the process. Also the author of a literary fairy tale is free to let his imagination run wild and create fantastic wonder tales. Based on this idea, at the occasion of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 265th birthday and the 230th anniversary of his death, 64 artists from 33 countries came together to honor the world-famous composer with contemporary imagery. It was also 230 years ago that Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute” was first performed.

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Like a Fairy Tale without a Happy Ending

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Excerpts from the book “Fairytale Art for Mozart”

Apparently, Mozart’s pet songbird could whistle a few bars of his piano concert in G major (K. 453). Did Mozart live in a magic world we love to hear stories about, even if we find them unbelievable? The prelude to his marriage, too, resembles a love story with obstacles the couple had to overcome to be united. Father Leopold was exasperated when Mozart decided to leave Salzburg and embark on the insecure life of a freelancer. Also, he did not approve of his son’s wife Constanze. Maybe this was why Wolfgang hardly mentioned his father’s passing in 1787, while dedicating a long obituary to his “star songbird”, which died around the same time. If we try to judge Mozart’s life in the simplistic terms of fairy tales, based on our conventional ideas of “good” and “bad”, we inevitably encounter contradictions.

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Living with pictures

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Excerpt from the book “Art Retreat 2020-21 – Living with pictures”

Collect, arrange and enjoy art

There are many reasons to collect art: prestige, value and appreciation of the artist’s reputation may play a role for one collector, a personal relationship with the artist, the joy of collecting or the responsibility for art and its promotion for another. In addition, there are those who are profit-oriented, for whom a work of art is primarily an investment without there being a personal, emotional connection or in-depth specialist knowledge.

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ART RETREAT Living with Pictures – KUNSTRETREAT Wohnen mit Bildern

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Book series ART RETREAT – volume 6

Editor: Gabriele Walter

Small-format pictures from all over the world are not only suitable for an affordable as well as exotic art collection, but also for creating inspired refuges in living spaces. On the occasion of the 6th international “Enter into Art” art competition for the promotion of small-format pictures the art book shows – in addition to exquisite large-format pictures – over 150 works by artists from 36 countries and 5 continents. At the same time it is a poetry book for relaxation with art, poetry and colors.

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George Sand and Frédéric Chopin on the Isle of Majorca

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Excerpt from the book “Art Retreat 2020-21 – Living with pictures”

One chapter of the book “Art Retreat 2020-21” is dedicated to the 210th anniversary of birth of the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin. During his stay with the French writer George Sand on the island of Mallorca, he wrote the world-famous “Rainbow Prelude”. Chopin’s dreamy Mallorca pieces flow into the creative contemplation of the pictures as musical recommendations. The editor of the book has assigned a selection of Chopin’s Mallorca Preludes op. 28 to the colors, both according to their key and according to their musical statement. Chopin had a copy of the preludes from the “Well-Tempered Piano” of Johann Sebastian Bach in his luggage and was inspired by it. It starts with C major and moves clockwise through the circle of fifths, which basically corresponds to the tonal order of colors in this book. When leafing through the color chapters, readers experience a relaxing effect. The shortness of the Préludes allows small-format paintings and haiku poems equally to appear often only as snapshots of a mood.

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The oratorio ‘The Seasons’ by Joseph Haydn

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Excerpt from the book “Excellent Art 2020”

Starting in Volume 2 of the “Excellent Art” series, each book will introduce one famous musical work that may contribute to the harmonious overall sound, alongside the topic related selection of haiku poetry. By introducing a musical work, the editor hopes to inspire readers to expand their perception to the tonal aspects of art and poetry. Inspired by the composer’s international experiences, and the way he uses notes like a painter in this work, she has chosen “The Seasons” by Joseph Haydn. After all, the seasons are of universal importance in the poetry of the world’s peoples.

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Concept of the book series “Art Retreat” and the meditation with works of art

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You can use our art meditation for all images that can be viewed in our various book series!

The concept is based on our international art installations of previous years. Its basic tenor can also be transferred to the art meditation with the works in the other book series. In addition to the small-format pictures from the “Art Retreat” book series, the large-format pictures from all book series are also included annually in our German online show, where they are sorted by color and inspire an art and color meditation.

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Art gift book ‘Excellent Art – Exzellente Kunst 2020’

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Book series LOUNGE 3 – volume II

Editor: Gabriele Walter

The art and gift book introduces 33 selected artists from 20 countries around the globe. The interpretations focus mainly on the visible, specific side of paintings and sculptures. The texts invite art lovers to connect with the artworks themselves. Special art and poetry pages have been incorporated to give artists an opportunity to present their visual work alongside their poetry.

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Awards, winners, rewards, finalists and jury 2021 – ART RETREAT – Living with pictures

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“When life seems like a series of dreams, there is also in dreams poetic justice.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Enter into Art – small-scale artworks – winners 2021

Contest as part of the book “Art Retreat 2020-21 – Living with pictures”

Editor and curator: Gabriele Walter

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Solo art book: Gerhard Rasser – Silent Path – Stille Wege

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We are pleased to announce the solo art and gift book of our artist friend Gerhard Rasser from Austria. The paths of silence remind observers to be silent and walk without haste. Although every emotional turmoil seems to be smoothed out in these paintings, their empty spaces contain more action than it seems. Master Eckehart once opined: „To receive everything, we must let go of everything.“ Gerhard Rasser’s painting titles imply that this is a “Long Path” marked by temptations, abysses, and melancholy. A path of searching and getting closer, of losing oneself in worlds new and distant.

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Solo art book: Takanori Iwase, Japan – Silver the Creek

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We are pleased to announce the solo art and gift book of our artist friend Takanori Iwase from Japan. The book is based on the solo winner exhibition held for Takanori Iwase in Cologne. His wood engravings are technical masterpieces. Through his delicate representation of light Takanori Iwases images convey a wonderfully lyrical mood.

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Solo art book: Chiemi Itoi, Japan – Cat Love

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It is perhaps no coincidence that artists and writers often lose their hearts to cats. Moreover, they tend to view their freedom-loving, four-legged friends with a degree of envy and respect. According to Mark Twain, “Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the leash. That one is the cat.”. Although the work of famous artists and writers plays no part in this book, the Japanese artist Chiemi Itoi and the German haiku poet Gabriele Walter have been inspired by their shared love of cats. In collaboration with graphic artist and designer Kurt Ries, they have created an imaginative and stylish gift book.

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