Sies + Höke at Art Basel Miami Beach 2021

Sies + Höke at Art Basel Miami Beach 2021

SIGMAR POLKE GERHARD RICHTER
DRAWINGS FROM THE SIXTIES

Art Basel Miami Beach | Kabinett Booth G10 Nov 30th — Dec 4th, 2021 Miami

Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter met in 19 62 as stu- dents at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Richter was born
in Dresden in 1932 and had already completed his first
degree there. He was nine years older than his fellow
student Polke. Inspired by new artistic developments in
New York, London and Paris, they acquired a figurative
visual language that was based on the imagery of popular mass media and borrowed its motifs and themes from
glossy magazines and daily newspapers. Together with
two other Academy students, Konrad Lueg and Manfred Kuttner, they founded the German version of international Pop Art under the slogan Capitalist Realism, which was to be their Federal Republican answer to the conformist East German Socialist Realism. At that time, Polke and
Richter in particular cultivated a close artistic relationship and personal friendship. Richter later emphasized that he had been closer with Sigmar Polke at that time “than with anyone before”.

Gerhard Richter’s drawings from the 1960s are closely
based on his painterly work at the time. They were created as designs for installations or realize alternative motifs for his paintings. With 17 Seascapes, Richter has assembled a small catalog raisonné of its own for this group of works, stating the respective catalog numbers. The character of Sigmar Polke’s drawings is entirely different. Often they come on small-format notepad sheets. Polke’s stroke is
rather reduced and awkward. While he ironically exagger- ates and breaks his own personality in the drawing The great Polke, he takes up criminal offenses, which were
heatedly discussed amongst the population at this time, with the work Taxi Murderer.

Since the 1960s, both artists have created an extensive, complex and discursive oeuvre of painting and drawing, observing each other from a benevolent and critical dis- tance. Gerhard Richter wrote in his diary in 1985: “Polke, I am happy to say, is doing something comparable.” Today, both their work is rated among the most influential in
international contemporary art and is represented in the collections of the most important modern art museums.

DIETMAR ELGER COLOGNE 2021