Peter Schmersal and Raimund van Well had been friends since childhood, grew up in the same city and later each turned to art in their own way. However, the two did not have a conventional artistic friendship, as they did not know at the beginning of their friendship that they would one day be artists.

Despite their decades-long close exchange, they remained at odds over how art should be shown, in which forms and media contemporary art should be presented in an individually authentic and socially relevant way.

This catalog brings together works by both artists for the first time and thus reveals the profound, ideologically underpinned contrasts, the stylistic incompatibilities and the obvious incomparability of Schmersal's art with that of van Wells. It is both a tribute by Schmersal to his deceased friend and a memorial to their 50-year bond.