"Kunst ist Arbeit": Erik Neutsch's "Spur der Steine"(1964) through the lens of its references to aesthetic debates and Italian realist painting

This article intends to show that Erik Neutsch’s novel ‘Spur der Steine’, which has mainly been studied in terms of its political partisanship, entails a very rich subtext of contested debates about realist aesthetics. Starting from Werner Bra ̈ unig’s juxtaposition of the novel’s main character Hannes Balla to the Italian futurist painter Giacomo Balla the argument can be made that scholarly criticism so far (both before and after the fall of the Wall) overlooked one of the crucial elements of the text. The numerous references to the Italian realist painters Renato Guttuso, Gabriele Mucchi and Ernesto Treccani, as well as the discussion of Paul Klee’s painting ‘Zwitschermaschine’ suggest that the ‘Kunstdiskussionen’ in the text occupy a crucial role within the narration. This article intends to shed light on the text’s focus on aesthetics emphasising, once again, the close relationship between literature and visual arts.