After graduation Günter Fruhtrunk studied architecture at the Technical University in Munich, but he gave up after two semesters to join the army in the fall of 1941 as a volunteer. Even during the war years - as a kind of counterweight to the war experiences - his drawings and watercolors focused especially on landscape motifs.

In 1945 in Neufrach, Fruhtrunk began a private study with the painter and printmaker William Straube, who was a student of Hölzel and Matisse. In 1948 Fruhtrunk met Willi Baumeister and Bissier in 1949, who led him to non-objective painting. When he received a grant from the State of Baden-Württemberg and the French Government in 1954, he moved to Paris to work in the studios of Léger and A...