Sigmar Polke

This is a post in our Artist of the Week series.



Sigmar Polke was born in 1941 in Germany. In 1945 his family fled to East Germany after the Germans were expelled from areas that were no longer under German control. In 1953 they left Communist East Germany and settled in West Germany. Once they arrived in West Germany Sigmar began to spend time in museums and galleries and even became an apprentice at a stained glass factory.

He entered art school at the age of 20, from 1961 - 1967 he remained at the Dusseldorf art academy. This was a period of great artistic achievements for Germany and Dusseldorf was a prosperous city and it became the center of many new art movements for Germany.

Sigmar founded an art style that was known as Capitalist Realism. It was considered an anti-style of art and even incorporated aspects of pictorial advertising. He worked to make parodic commentaries on the consumer society that was growing in Germany and the world. His art style allowed him to incorporate anything he wished, so it was common to see a range of different mediums in his work and for each piece to have a long and complicated narrative.

In the 1970s he began to travel the world and he became interested in photography. After his travels he became a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg until 1991 when he decided to settle in Cologne.

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