Günther Borst

Günther Hans Karl Borst (Wetzlar, Germany, 1938 – The Hague, Netherlands, 2022) was a German-born Dutch painter, printmaker and sculptor, working in a lyrical abstract style.

Borst trained at the art school in Wetzlar and at the Grafische Fachschule in Frankfurt before settling in the Netherlands, where he became a Dutch citizen in 1982. He lived and worked in The Hague, and from 1990 in Scheveningen. Between 1987 and 1992 he returned to study painting at the Psychopolis academy in The Hague.

Alongside painting he made woodcuts and linocuts, worked as a graphic designer, and made three-dimensional work in cloth, wood, lead, rope and iron. His work was abstract, and he named Mark Rothko, Piet Mondriaan and Wassily Kandinsky as influences — an affinity visible in his Kleurenstudies naar Rothko of 1992.

He exhibited in Amsterdam, The Hague, Scheveningen, Wassenaar and Rijswijk, with solo exhibitions at the Haagse Kunstkring in 1994 and 2001. The title of the second, tot in het oneindige (“to infinity”), echoes his Ad infinitum series.