Sigmar Polke: Works on Paper 1963-1974

One of the most significant artists of his generation, Sigmar Polke (b. 1941) came of age creatively around 1963 in Dusseldorf. His earliest expressive idiom was crude and humorous, its images outrageous, and its content seemingly trivial, but embedded in these works were subversive and parodic commentaries on consumer society, German postwar politics, and classic artistic conventions. Few of Polke's works demonstrate more vividly his imagination, sardonic wit, and eclectic creative process than the drawings, watercolors, and gouaches of the 1960s and early 1970s. This book accompanies the first American museum exhibition of these drawings. More than 300 works are illustrated, including small sketches in pen, larger watercolors and gouaches, others stamped with a dot-screen process, and pages from about 15 small sketchbooks. Several important and monumental works on paper from the early 1970s are illustrated in color for the first time.

Bice Curiger is editor-in-chief of Parkett magazine and a curator at the Kunsthaus, Zurich.