Sale: 375 / Post War / Contemporary Art, Dec. 04. 2010 in Munich Lot 212

 
Sigmar Polke - Ohne Titel


212
Sigmar Polke
Ohne Titel, 1992.
Gouache
Estimate:
€ 35,000 / $ 37,800
Sold:
€ 50,020 / $ 54,021

(incl. surcharge)
Gouache
Signed and dated lower right. On paper. 69,6 x 99,7 cm (27,4 x 39,2 in), the full sheet

PROVENANCE: Galerie Klein, Bad Münstereifel (formerly Bonn).
Private collection Hesse.

Born in Oels, Silesia, in 1941, Sigmar Polke moved in 1953 from Thuringia to Düsseldorf, where he embarked on an apprenticeship as a glass-painter in 1959. He spent the years 1961-1967 studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Gerhard Hoehme and Karl Otto Götz and met with Gerhard Richter. In 1963 Polke and Richter joined forces with Konrad Fischer-Lueg and Manfred Kuttner to mount an exhibition entitled 'Eine Demonstration für den kapitalistischen Realismus' ['A Demonstration for Capitalist Realism']. The exhibits were notable for the ironical treatment of consumer product and the critical use made of everyday clichés. Wit and irony are the hallmarks of Polke's work, even in its early stages, most noticeably so when he stagily features socks, sausages or interchangeable advertising from travel brochures. The first grid and strip pictures as well as paintings on decorating fabrics emerged. In 1966 the artist was awarded the Young Art Prize and had his first one-man show. During the 1970s he travelled extensively, concentrating heavily on photography as a medium. Both in it and in painting his work often has an experimental flavour, with coincidence figuring prominently and autonomous chemical processes having discernibly taken place. In 1972 Polke showed work for the first time at a documenta 5 in Kassel, where he also showed works on the documenta 6 (1977) and 7 (1982). In 1977 he became lecturer and in 1991 professor at the ‘Hochschule für Bildende Künste’ in Hamburg. In the years 1980 and 1981 Sigmar Polke went on journeys to South East Asia, Papua New Guinea and Australia.

Opposites and contrasts dominate Polke‘s œuvre, in which the viewer finds works with an ironic play with the world of advertising as well as works with historic and socio-critical notions, additionally, different techniques, such as the grid- and pour-images, can also be found. The regularity, precision and predictability of serial newspaper printing, which Polke tried to carry over to painting in form of his grid pictures, seems to contrast the color traces in his poured pictures. In our work the artist combined the two picture languages. With the help of his matrix dots, which have become an independent reduced code, Polke references his early figurative work, whereas the blue color traces which run in different directions across the image carrier after it had been turned hint at Polke‘s poured pictures from the 1980s. Two different techniques that make the artist’s signature anonymous are presented side by side, in combination with the grid structure they make for a retrospection of his artistic creation.

Sigmar Polke regularly shows works on both national and international exhibitions and received numerous honors and awards. In 1997 the largest retrospective of Polke‘s works took place in the Federal Art and Exhibition Hall in Bonn and at the Galerie der Gegenwart, Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. In 1997 Sigmar Polke received his biggest public commission with the renewal of the glass windows of the Zurich Grossmünster ("great minster"), which he was granted in 2006 in the context of an artist competition. The five glass and seven agate windows were completed and given over to the public in 2009. Polke died of cancer on 10 June 2010. [JS].




212
Sigmar Polke
Ohne Titel, 1992.
Gouache
Estimate:
€ 35,000 / $ 37,800
Sold:
€ 50,020 / $ 54,021

(incl. surcharge)