Ingrid Mössinger, director of the boutique Chemnitz Art Gallery in Germany, is set to host the first ever exhibition of Bob Dylan paintings. What’s more, it turns out the reason it has taken this long for the iconic musician to find some hanging space is that simply nobody asked him.

When Mössinger made her offer, Dylan went about creating 320 new works in watercolour and gouache, digitally enlarging them on deckle-edged paper.

“I think he was just waiting to be asked, and quite simply until then, no one had,” Mössinger told The Guardian in the UK.

Dylan echoes the sentiment in the exhibition notes. “I was fascinated to learn of Ingrid’s interest in my work,” he writes, “and it gave me the impetus to realise the vision I had for these drawings many years ago. If not for this interest, I don’t know if I even would have revisited them.”

The exhibition, which runs until 3 February 2008, has been reviewed favourably. Prominent art critic Burkhard Müller noted, “The pictures that are on show would also be worth viewing even if Bob Dylan had never sung a note or written a line of poetry.”

With Dylan’s approval, the exhibition is now set to travel to South Korea, Stockholm and New York.