Bob Dylan has agreed to allow the first-ever exhibition of his work at Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, beginning 28 October 2007. Although Dylan has been a committed visual artist for more than four decades, this three-month event -- titled "The Drawn Blank Series" -- will mark the first museum showing of his work.


Exclusively for this exhibition, Bob Dylan has produced more than 200 remarkably intense color variations on pictorial motifs from a book of drawings and sketches done from 1989 to 1992, which were published in 1994 under the title Drawn Blank by Random House.


In the book's preface, Dylan explained that these works were intended as sketches for paintings that he eventually planned to complete. These now fully realized works -- photo-lithographs transferred to deckle-edged paper -- have been stunningly reworked by the artist in watercolor and gouache and will be displayed for the first time in Chemnitz.


When asked how Chemnitz came to be the venue for "The Drawn Blank Series" exhibition, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz Director Ingrid Moessinger explained, "I first came across Bob Dylan's book of drawings at an historical exhibition about Bob Dylan at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York. I went straight out and bought my own copy and immediately began to track down the originals."


Bob Dylan commented, "I was fascinated to learn of Ingrid's interest in my work, and it gave me the impetus to realize the vision I had for these drawings many years ago." He added, "If not for this interest, I don't know if I even would have revisited them."


An extensive catalogue (in German and English) with numerous color and black-and-white reproductions will be published by Prestel Munich, New York, and London to mark the exhibition. The catalogue will be edited by Ingrid Moessinger and Kerstin Drechsel and will contain essays by Prof. Dr. Frank Zoellner, Leipzig; Diana Widmaier-Picasso, Paris; and Dr. Jens Rosteck, Nice.