ART-PRESENTATION: Sigmar Polke-Early Prints
Sigmar Polke found the motif for his first published print “Girlfriends I” in a newspaper ad that had itself been printed with the offset method. The fact that the offset technique permits the production of an edition of virtually any size means broader availability and low prices and thus suggests the democratization of the art market.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Städel Museum Archive
Presenting a selection of 30 works, the exhibition at the Städel Museum highlights Sigmar Polke’s early prints. For the works he printed from 1967 to 1979 he preferred offset or silkscreen printing, two rather unsophisticated techniques in terms of craftsmanship and trivial methods from the artistic point of view, to transport and spread seemingly random, irritating comments on art and society. Other works by Sigmar Polke use an unusual blend of different printing techniques and material features, they combine silkscreen printing with blind blocking and punching or feature haptic surface structures, for example. Having a work printed in offset always requires a professional printer. This is why Polke dedicated himself all the more to which motifs and materials he chose. In an era informed by the belief in growth and upheavals critical of society, Polke stuck to his messages grounded on observation, wit, and irony in his printed work. The printed image, circulated by the mass media or photographically staged by the artist, remained an essential foundation of his work as an artist. fathoming the works’ special quality. While the art scene of Paris was pushed into the background through the increasing influence of American Pop art in the ‘60s, Sigmar Polke made the consumer-oriented world of commodities and petty bourgeois post-war idyll of the Federal Republic of Germany manifest in magazines and advertising the foundation of his extraordinarily reflected and nonetheless ostensibly playful production. Apart from pictures from print media, Polke also used his own photographs for his prints such as that of a folding rule opened to form a star and taken with a Polaroid camera, experimentally treated negatives, visibly damaged enlargements or shots taken in New York City during a trip to the USA. Seen against this background it is all the more surprising that the artist had a silkscreen print elaborately blind-blocked and punched for a series of school prints for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in 1972 and upvalued the individual sheets of the edition by overpainting them with glitter paint, transforming them into unique works.
Info: Curator: Dr. Jutta Schütt, Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, Frankfurt, Duration: 2/3-22/5/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, Thu-Fri 10:00-21:00, www.staedelmuseum.de
