Gerhard Rühm (*1930 in Vienna, lives and works in Cologne) is an artist, writer, and composer as well as a pioneer of Concrete and Visual Poetry. He studied piano and musical composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and then took private lessons with the twelve-tone composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who had a lasting influence on Rühm’s experimental approach to words, sounds, and tones. Together with Friedrich Achleitner, Hans Carl Artmann, Konrad Bayer, and Oswald Wiener, Rühm founded the Wiener Gruppe in 1954 (1954–1964) and was a co-initiator of provocative performances at the 1st and 2nd Literary Cabarets in Vienna (1958; 1959). After these avant-garde experimental events, Rühm and other participants were placed under a publication ban by the Austrian government. In 1964, he moved to West Berlin, where he participated in collaborative projects with Ludwig Gosewitz, and Tomas Schmit, among others. Together they performed at the Kunstfest in Büdingen (1966), the music festival (1967) hosted by Galerie René Block at the Forum Theater in Berlin, and as part of the play Fünf Minuten (1967), which was developed for Austrian television. The five works on paper are unique pieces selected by Rühm for the n.b.k. edition series. They are exemplary for his various creative phases since the 1970s. Rühm’s works were presented at the Documenta in Kassel (1987; 1977) and the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1997). Retrospectives of his work were recently organized by BRUSEUM, Graz (2015) and ZKM, Karlsruhe (2017). His oeuvre has been honored with the Grand Austrian State Prize for Literature (1991) and the Golden Decoration of Honor for Services to the State of Vienna (2007).