Günther Holzapfel, Footpainter (spastic paralysis)

Because of complications in the birth Günther Holzapfel came to the world spastic paralyzed. He can steer the movements of head and arms not controlled and depends on the wheel chair. Already as a child he took for many activities his feet for help which took over more and more the duties of the hands. He could not learn the walking in the absence of therapeutic and medical assistance in the years of war and postwar years.

At that time Günther Holzapfel was excluded as a handicapped child from the school visit. Reading, writing, mathematics and the necessary general knowledge he worked autodidactically and with the help of his family. At the age of six years he undertook his first painting attempts with wooden colour pencils. His painting knowledge he appropriated for the most part also autodidactically. However, for brief suggestions, consultations and discussions healthy painter's colleagues answered his questions and helped him.
Günther Holzapfel was taken up in 1964 in the VDMFK  (association of mouth- and footpainter artists) and received in 1983 the full membership.

In the painting Günther Holzapfel find his fulfilment and his life luck. „Often I have said that I was not so happy as‚ healthy person‘ maybe as now“, he writes in his homepage. Big joy prepares for him over and over again to show the person by painting presentations, as fullly and happily a life as a disabled person can be. That's why he takes part over and over again in exhibitions and painting presentations and organises by himself such events.
The preferential motives of Günther Holzapfel are sceneries from his native country, the Bavarian Forest, but also still life and own picture compositions. His oil pictures and acrylic pictures were already to be seen in many towns of Germany and abroad.

 
Text : VDMFK

 
More to Günther Holzapfel you find under www.holzapfel-fussmaler.de