Inhalt
SIGMAR POLKE
The German artist Sigmar Polke, born in Oels, Lower Silesia, in 1941, studied painting at the
Düsseldorf Kunstakademie. Together with his colleagues Gerhard Richter and Konrad Fischer-Lueg he founded Capitalist Realism in the 1960s, a European reaction to American Pop Art. Polke’s independent work is marked by experimental painting techniques and his use of a broad range of artistic media. Polke's art always demonstrates subversive forms of wit, frequently socio-critical but also full of self-mockery. The winner of many international awards, Sigmar Polke lives and works in Cologne.
The range of artistic media and techniques that characterise Polke’s work, can be seen in the approximately fifteen works included in the Brandhorst Collection. From the small, almost intimate format of the oil painting Goethes Werke of 1963, to the monumental and feisty Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité of 1988, and to the partly printed, partly painted medium-sized masterpiece Die drei Lügen der Malerei of 1994, the range of Polke’s work in the Brandhorst Collection covers the dimensionof the artist´s creative output.