Sigmar Polke
1941–2010
© The estate of Sigmar Polke/ DACS 2019
License this image
© The estate of Sigmar Polke/ DACS 2019
License this image
In Tate Britain
Prints and Drawings Rooms
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Sigmar Polke (13 February 1941 – 10 June 2010) was a German painter and photographer.
Polke experimented with a wide range of styles, subject matters and materials. In the 1970s, he concentrated on photography, returning to paint in the 1980s, when he produced abstract works created by chance through chemical reactions between paint and other products. In the last 20 years of his life, he produced paintings focused on historical events and perceptions of them.
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Read full Wikipedia entryArtworks
Sigmar Polke Untitled (Square 2)
2003
Sigmar Polke Untitled (Triptych)
2002
Sigmar Polke Hallo Shiva
1974
Sigmar Polke Girlfriends I
1967
Sigmar Polke Potato Machine - Apparatus Whereby One Potato Can Orbit Another
1969
Sigmar Polke Figure with Hand (I Am Made Dizzy by a Carpet of Rose-Petals...)
1973
Film and audio
TateShots
Sigmar Polke: Invention and Experimentation
Snail juice, meteor dust and potatoes ... explore some of the unusual materials and techniques used by German artist Sigmar Polke
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Painting, Politics, Persona: What Polke Means Today?
This audio recording aims to situate Sigmar Polke's significance within a wider art historical context before unpicking the complex ...
Features
Art Term
Capitalist realism
Capitalist realism was a movement formed in Berlin in Germany in 1963 to challenge the dominating influence of American pop ...
Art Term
Comic strip art
Comic strip art is art that imitates the style, commercial printing techniques and subject matter of comic strips
Read
Do you know your Polke from your Polka?
As part of his wide-ranging career, German artist Sigmar Polke painted a variety of consumer culture images - from sausages and ...
Tate Etc
A contemporary visionary (part II): Peter Doig on Sigmar Polke
To coincide with Tate Modern’s first full retrospective of a career spanning five decades (including many works never previously ...
Tate Etc
A contemporary visionary (part I): Peter Fischli on Sigmar Polke
Sigmar Polke (1941–2010) was one of the most inventive and influential artists of recent times. A leading figure in ...
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Sigmar Polke: a life of defying convention
We take a look at the life of the eccentric and experimental artist, whose work is currently on show at ...
Tate Etc
Between terror and ecstasy: Artistic hallucination
Stories of hallucinations in art and literature date back to the Bible, but the idea of the artistic hallucination is ...
Tate Etc
The deliberate accident in art: Blots
Ever since Leonardo da Vinci urged artists to search for inspiration in the dirt on walls or the streaked patterns ...
Tate Etc
On the road to a state of grace: Boetti, Polke, Clemente and Taaffe
As Adams writes: "This is a tale of four contemporary art shamans, in a pre-9/11 world that could still ...
Tate Etc
Tate Etc. issue 12: Spring 2008
TATE ETC Issue 12 Spring 2008: Visiting and revisiting Art, etcetera, online edition of Tate's magazine
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