Johannes Grützke completes his studies at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Berlin from 1957 to 1964. There he is a pupil in a master class of Peter Janssen, from 1962 on he is a pupil of Oskar Kokoschka in Salzburg in addition to that. In 1965 Grützke becomes a founding member of the 'Erlebnisgeiger', in 1965 he sets up Berlin's Schule der neuen Prächtigkeit, together with the painters M. Bluth, M. Koeppel and K.-H. Ziegler. After giving guest lectures at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg for one year in 1976, he designs several stage sets, with Peter Zadek as producer, at the Deutsche Schauspielhaus in Hamburg from 1979 on and also works there as an artistic advisor from 1985 to 1989. He is appointed to teach at the Sommerakademie der Bildenden Künste in Salzburg in 1987. He wins a competition by the city of Frankfurt (on the Main) for a big wall picture for Frankfurt's Paulskirche, on which he works from 1989 to 1991. As a painter, draughtsman and graphic designer for printed material Grützke has been creating works since the sixties, which impress people by consistency as well as his selection of motifs and brilliant use of the techniques. With his art oriented around the concrete, he wants to realise ideas in painting as if they originated in reality. Thus, thinking becomes reality for Grützke. Grützke himself: "My pictures express my personal experiences,(...), and I portray, in place of many others, general experiences in my pictures. (...) I paint the whole reality with the help of a part of reality. The small reality surrounding me, (...), stands in place of the whole big reality. Therefore I stand in place of all people."