Oil painting -> List of Painters -> Sigmar Polke

Sigmar Polke

Early days: Polke was born in Oelsnitz in Lower Silesia. He fled with his family to Thuringia in 1945 during the Expulsion of Germans after World War II. His family escaped from the Communist regime in East Germany in 1953, traveling first to West Berlin and then to Düsseldorf.

Career:

Upon his arrival in West Germany, in Wittich, Polke began to spend time in galleries and museums and worked as an apprentice in a stained glass factory called Düsseldorf Kaiserswerth, before entering the Kunstakademi Düsseldorf (Art School) at age twenty. From 1961-1967 he studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Karl Otto Goetz and Gerhard Hoehme and began his creative output during a time of enormous social, cultural, and artistic changes in Germany and elsewhere. During the 1960s, Düsseldorf, in particular, was a prosperous, commercial city and an important centre of artistic activity.

In 1963 Polke founded “Kapitalistischen Realisms” (Capitalistic Realism), a painting movement with Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg (later called Konrad Fischer). It is an anti-style of art, appropriating the pictorial short-hand of advertising.

This title also referred to the realist style of art known as ‘Socialist Realism’, then the official art doctrine of the Soviet Union (from which he had fled with his family), but it also commented upon the consumer-driven art ‘doctrine’ of western capitalism. He also participated in “Demonstrative Ausstellung”, a store-front exhibition in Düsseldorf with Kuttner, Lueg, and Richter.