Sigmar Polke
(Oelsnitz in Lower Silesia - ) |
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Art Work
| Name: |
Sigmar Polke |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
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| Nationality: |
Polish |
| Birth: |
Oelsnitz in Lower Silesia |
| Death: |
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| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
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| Medium: |
Pencil, watercolor, and gouach |
| Method: |
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| Style: |
An anti-style of art, appropriating the pictorial short-hand of advertising |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
Photography
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Biography
Polke was born in Oelsnitz in Lower Silesia. He fled with his family to Thuringia after World War II. His family escaped from the Communist regime in East Germany in 1953.
In West Germany,Polke began to spend time in galleries and museums and worked as an apprentice in a stained glass factory called Dusseldorf Kaiserswerth, before entering the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf. From 1961-1967 he studied at the Dusseldorf Art Academy under Karl Otto Goetz and Gerhard Hoehme.
In 1963 Polke founded "Kapitalistischen Realismus" (Capitalistic Realism), a painting movement with Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg. This title also referred to 'Socialist Realism', then the official art doctrine of the Soviet Union. He also participated in "Demonstrative Ausstellung", a store-front exhibition in Dusseldorf with Kuttner, Lueg, and Richter.
Polke's creative output during this time of enormous social, cultural, and artistic changes in Germany and elsewhere, demonstrate most vividly his imagination, sardonic wit, and subversive approach in his drawings, watercolors, and gouaches produced during the 1960s and 1970's.
It is not unusual for Polke to combine household materials and paint, lacquers, pigments, screen print and transparent sheeting in one piece.
Polke traveled throughout the 1970s, photographing in Pakistan, Paris, New York, Afghanistan, and Brazil. From 1977-1991 he was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Hamburg. He settled in Cologne. |
Samples of Work
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