Travel & Draw
Heiner Radau travels to a city, unfolds one big sheet of paper on the street and draws – until the whole city is on it.
a travel diary in ink – since 2015
Since 2015 Heiner Radau has been travelling the world with one large sheet of paper, a few dip pens and a bottle of ink. He stays about a month, draws every day right on the street and lets the city grow onto the sheet: the places he discovers, the people he meets, the food, the noise, the weather.
Nothing is drawn from photos and nothing can be erased. Every artwork is a diary in ink – and every canvas and poster in this shop started like this.
How it works
One large sheet of paper that folds into a triangle-shaped table, a few dip pens, a bottle of ink – and a backpack. That is the whole studio. On day one the sheet is still empty.
Every day the sheet is unfolded again: on squares, stairs, subway platforms and riverbanks. In heat, wind and rain, among curious passers-by. No photos, no tracing, no eraser.
Day by day the drawings grow together into one dense diary of the city. Scanned in full detail, the finished sheet becomes the canvases and fine art posters in this shop.
The journey
Where it all began. Heiner grew up on the corner of Metzer Straße and Kollwitzstraße in Prenzlauer Berg, and those corners are on the sheet. His Berlin is the city of graffiti writers, backyards and U-Bahn stations – more than 60 real places, from the TV Tower and the World Clock at Alexanderplatz to the Ampelmännchen.
my corner: Metzer Straße / Kollwitzstraße
Métro platforms, zinc rooftops and café tables. Paris was drawn the Travel & Draw way: sitting right in the middle of it, line after line, while the city kept moving around the sheet.
Métro, zinc rooftops, café tables
From the Barbican to the canals of Camden, from the dragons of the City to the Underground: London in black ink, drawn where the city happens – not in a studio.
Barbican, Camden, the Tube
Chaotic order, messy beauty: cables, signs, scooters and a thousand details. Hanoi was drawn in 2016 – from Train Street to the roots of the old banyan trees, with a bowl of phở for breakfast.
phở for breakfast, cables everywhere
The small city of Luang Prabang, drawn during a one-month stay in 2016. Heiner lived in the house of a young architect he had met on the plane – and the jungle, the temples and the occasional praying mantis found their way onto the sheet.
stayed with an architect I met on the plane
Elevated highways, temple roofs and subway signs. In 2018 the sheet was unfolded on Seoul’s sidewalks, stairs and park lawns – old Korea and the megacity growing into one drawing.
temple roofs & subway signs
The Torres de Serranos, the futuristic City of Arts and Sciences, old-town arches and street art: Valencia, drawn in 2019 with inspiration from locals and fellow artists.
Torres de Serranos at sunset
Basel took the drawing from the street into Galerie Hilt, the city’s oldest gallery, where the original was exhibited. Street-art energy, drawn with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker.
from the street into Galerie Hilt
Belgium’s capital – its architecture, its squares and its artistic heritage – captured in one detailed black-and-white drawing.
drawing on the cobblestones
Canals, bicycles, the Munttoren and the waterfront: Amsterdam was drawn on a folding chair by the water, with the sheet propped up on its triangle table.
folding chair by the canal
Above ground on squares, in parks and in front of the landmarks – and for hours deep underground in U-Bahn stations, where the rhythm of the trains became part of the drawing. The folded 80 × 80 cm sheet travelled in a backpack.
hours underground in the U-Bahn
45 days, more than 30 real locations: from Lower Manhattan to Brooklyn, Harlem, the Bronx and Queens – including a night in the middle of Times Square. The whole journey is told stop by stop in the NYC Art Map.
45 days · 30+ places · Times Square at night
Every line is a memory.
Every place has a story.
On the road
