The Written Art Collection is dedicated to artistic positions that combine language, writing and image. Starting with the Art Informel of the 1950s and gestural abstraction, the more than 100 works on display demonstrate the continuity of the significance of written art across generations and cultures: Artists invent imaginative alphabets and sign languages, write poems, quote from literature, translate thoughts and conversations into spray-painted, graphic, gestural or embroidered messages. The catalogue is published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition in Munich and explores the phenomenon of writing and images with contributions on the history of written art, its political potential and current perspectives on calligraphy and typography.