Editor: self-published
Websites: http://sperber-illustrationen.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/sperberillustrationen.official/
https://www.etsy.com/de/shop/SperberBuch

All artwork © Benjamin König

I already told you nearly two years ago: the paintings of the Bavarian artist Benjamin König are full of surprises. Indeed, in September 2021, our website published an article dealing with the most striking features of this artist’s works of art.
Today we introduce the first paper-printed collection of his fairy tales- and fantastic-themed illustrations. König‘s book, whose title is “Sperber Illustrationen”, consists of 84 high-quality printed pages, and has been published in a limited edition of 500 hand-numbered copies. Let’s look closer at the cover image in order to discover its peculiarities, which can also be pointed out in many of the collection pictures.
At first sight, the subject of the cover picture is plain to see: night falls on a snowy village. Nonetheless, the gloomy nocturnal figure looming in the distance brings the whole scene to a truly cosmic size. In turn, the bare and solitary village seems to have sunk into the silence of a last outer space winter. Therefore, this illustration by Benjamin König really takes a grim fairy subject to a metaphysical and cosmic level. As anticipated a few lines before, this can also be found in other paintings by the Bavarian artist.
The second most vivid peculiarity of the cover image lies in its doom-heralding atmosphere. The viewer’s eyes seem to stop spontaneously in front of the picture in search for signs of the sinister deed which is going to happen, even if it never really takes place in the painted scene. On the other hand, the only real and visible feature is the moment before the deed, all the more breath-taking and unsettling since it stretches to infinity. Figuratively speaking, unsettlement is therefore just another “color” used by Benjamin König in his works of art.
Whispers, rustlings and silence are also other essential “colors” on the palette of the Bavarian artist; they literally pervade all the images of the “Sperber Illustrationen” collection. In fact, König‘s graphic style spurs our imagination to spontaneously conceive the sounds, or even their absence, around the portrayed characters and places: take a look at just few pages of the book as a confirmation. And if the printed figures moved by themselves in the meantime, it would be neither strange nor unpredictable after all…
Paolo Crugnola

A note to our readers
You can read on our website the September 2021 article concerning Benjamin König’s amazing paintings and cover artworks on the link below:

Guests at the Hoagascht of Lunar Aurora: the art of Benjamin König