In 1954 Hünerfauth received private training from Conrad Westpfahl, an important artist of Informal Art, which led her to abstract painting.

One of the most important retrospective exhibitions of her oeuvre titled "Irma Hünerfauth – IRMAnipulations" was held from 3 August until 2 September 1990 in the town hall of Munich.

Occasionally, expressionistic elements can be found, for example the wildly moved landscape forms in the painting "Pupplinger Au" (1950) or "Mother and Son" (1952), which show strong emotional movement and deepness.

It features a painted perforated metal plate on which emotional impulses run riot as if they were driven by electronic force.

In the right corner, one can spot a drain plug with a chain simply fixated on canvas, a find, a piece of scrap that profanely ironizes the whole utopian and playfully futuristic portrayal, just like the subject that seems to be placed somewhere between space and earth.

During her early period, Hünerfauth made figurative drawings and watercolors in the style of the academic tradition, but even her sketch-like work already featured an expressive verve.

Also notable is the already mentioned folder in memory of Franz Roh, a tribute which emphasizes friendship, closeness, and death.

These are some kind of a retrospective, fashioned after an artist's diary, made out of collage-like paste ins of cutouts from earlier regular exhibition brochures and press reports.

The boxes contain different objects, technical scrap which is moved motor-driven or commented acoustically with the help of an audio tape at the touch of a button.

At the same time you will see how the objects in the box slowly fluctuate according to their self-oscillation similar as a blast of air quietly moves the nature.

"[10] With these objects Hünerfauth portrays comprehensive human and ideological thoughts as everyday occurrences: the misery of war and its phenomena, the loneliness living in mass towers and building blocks of our satellite towns ('from countless windows eyes stare into emptiness').

Its endless audio tape plays the artist's voice reciting a text by Meta Kristall: "Blue pistol used with pleasure by a boy's hand, now rotten as scrap in the landscape, a butterfly rocking itself on it.

Talk to the otherman .. Otherman talks to you..." Another major work is the PopArt related speaking object "Emanze" (Women's libber, 1990) which is brightly coloured on both front and back as well as Krieg – auch Tiere leiden (War animals suffer too, 1986) and also the three-dimensional installation Rocker's Tod (The death of the biker, 1989).

The artist and gallery owner Peter Luft said Hünerfauth's art resembles Picasso's in spirit, wit, irony, simplicity, cogency and excursiveness.

While Picasso remains a painter and drawer, a designer of the surface, during most of his works, Irma Hünerfauth stepped out of the two-dimensionality to never to return.

But beyond all this, she loves and practices: Contre-reliefs, machine arts, Objet trouvé and especially bruitism, which means the mixed medial synthesis of audio, literature, kinetics and at the same time theatrical staging.

Through these interactive dynamics the access to her poetic concept is eased for art lovers; nevertheless, she says, "my work must seem as abstruse to the majority of our society".

The first of them – made in the late 1960s – are smaller sized bronze sculptures on a base or small table, and include ready-mades.

on a head-high column (grooved), Serpentina, Portrait of Mrs. Heller and especially impressive 'I'nstance (1977), Black Butterfly so as the admonisher Ma(h)nuel – all free-standing statuary art.

The two meters high sculpture with gas mask, opened lungs and many symbolic exhaust pipes was created from original machine parts in 1971.

With this sculpture the artist wants to draw attention to climate protection and the air pollution by carbon monoxide in big cities.

In the plinth with hand written ironic slogan as an wordplay "STATT LUFT – STADTLUFT (Instead of air – big city atmosphere 'smog')".

Some of these metal collages (Assemblage) she mounted temporarily on the exterior facade of her own house to expose them to weather and so natural corrosion.

At the plinth panel with a verse from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "The girl's breast in the hand, the doorbell on the wall, are related.

The term is aiming at a type of text that was especially conceived for women and their intimate orientation towards God in the 19th century.

"The creative force in the prayer books is so strong that it transforms the material, the application, into one single matter, which is ensouled by the personal view that possesses the same structure like her relief-like idols.

"[15] Hünerfauth is a postwar artist of the so-called "lost generation", whose artworks sold mostly directly to private as well as public collections and thus seldom appeared at international art events or on the auction market during her lifetime.

[17] From 12 April to 28 July 2019, Hünerfauth's work First Love was featured in the group exhibition "Straying from the Line" at the Schinkel Pavillon Berlin together with other women artists Lee Lozano and Betye Saar.

[18] From 4 June to 3 October 2022 two major works by Hünerfauth, the speaking box To Be Like Grass and the vibration object Isolation, were shown at the 15th edition of the Triennial of Small Sculpture Fellbach under the title The Vibration of Things, an international group exhibition of contemporary women artists curated by Elke aus dem Moore.

Speaking Boxes is the first posthumous solo exhibition of German artist Irma Hünerfauth (1907-1998) at Simian Art Center in Copenhagen curated by Elisa R. Linn and Lennart Wolff[20] with first-ever Headline in the international renowned art magazine Artforum for Irma Hünerfauth by Alice Goodwin ...' Together, these kinetic assemblages speak to the crises of pollution and loneliness, industrialization and war, of the second half of the twentieth century, but they feel eerily prescient in their anticipation of the cybernetic systems that are now part of the fabric of our society'...[21] Numerous impressions of this exhibition can be found at ArtViewer.