Caspar David Friedrich immortalized the five towers of Halle’s market square in a Romantic style, Lyonel Feininger recreated the towers in prismatic form, while Hans Nowak charged his painting The Market in Halle with impressionist pictorial elements. The global economic crisis in 1929 plunged Nowak‘s family in Halle into existential hardship. He left the city when he was around 15 years old. From then on he lived exclusively – and uncompromisingly – from painting. During World War II, he was about to be sentenced to death.

Soon after the war, he was considered a "master of colour", and even became a member of the Société des Artistes Français. After an "art action", which caused a worldwide furore, he was dubbed the "Eulenspiegel", or "jester", of art history. In the years that followed, he disappeared from the public eye. Unjustifiably, as this book shows