Book Description
Since 1967, Sigmar Polke had created about 150 editions-a broad range of works that by turns paraphrase and experiment with his idiosyncratic oeuvre. This publication, which collects all of his editions together for the first time, is therefore not merely an afterthought-instead it provides a direct, central approach to the artist's work. Polke's use of offset printing in his early works can be considered revolutionary: this technique was used by few of the artist's contemporaries and was not acceptable or canonical until much later on. What's more, in his editions for the 'Hamburger Griffelkunst' in 1973, Polke tried his hand at working with velour-finished paper, a material which repeatedly triggered the printer press's non-stop setting. These works, expressions of the artist's love of experimentation, exploded the boundaries of graphic art. Compared to the more rarefied space of his paintings, these editions, largely conceived with communication in mind, engage the viewer in an exciting dialogue with one of the finest artists of the past fifty years.
About the author
Sigmar Polke was born in Oels, Germany, in 1941, and studied at the State Academy of Art in Dusseldorf. He first achieved recognition in 1963 when he began working in a witty and irreverent style he termed "Capitalist Realism"--often considered a more complex and political cousin to Anglo-American Pop Art. He has continued to create innovative and aesthetically impressive works through the present day. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at such major museums as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art, San Fransisco, the Muse de l'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Hirshorn Museum, Washington, D.C., the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Walker Arts Center, and, in 1999, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has been the recipient of the Venice Biennale' s "Golden Lion," the Erasmus award, and the Carnegie award. He lives and works in Cologne, Germany. Martin Henschel, director of the Wrttembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, is the author of one of the only available Sigmar Polke monographs, "The Three Lies of Painting."
