The East has spat me out, the West hasn't eaten me yet, A.R. Penck.
A.R. Penck (*1939 in Dresden, † 2017 in Zurich) is one of the most internationally acclaimed German artists. He made the political conditions in divided and unified Germany the subject of his art and created a radically new, expressive pictorial language, which is reminiscent of cave painting...
Born under the name Ralf Winkler, he published his works with pseudonyms such as Mike Hammer, T.M., Mickey Spilane, Theodor Marx, a.Y. or Y. From 1968 he takes on the name A.R. Penck in the style of the geologist and ice age researcher Albrecht Penck (1858-1945).
From 1953 to 1954 he had painting and drawing lessons by Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). With his first world images in 1961, the year of the Berlin Wall being built, Penck developed an artistic language that was to make him famous. In recourse to cave painting, an abstract, artistic vocabulary of signs emerges, with which he captures social conditions and what he calls "attitude dependencies" in the field of tension between the individual and society in signal-like, powerful images.
Penck also uses this artistic sign language to create his theoretical model "Standard", which he understood as his "positive contribution to socialism". But the GDR rejected his work, and revoked his membership in the Association of Fine Artists. This was synonymous with the prohibition to work as an artist in public in the GDR.
Penck is increasingly living in isolation in eastern Germany. The way out is the West. Gallery owners begin to smuggle paintings of Penck to the West. In 1972, Penck participates for the first time at the documenta 5 in Kassel and is successful. In 1980, he is forced to "leave" for the Federal Republic of Germany. He settled first in Cologne, later in Dublin.
A.R. Penck participated in the documenta 5 (1972), documenta 7 (1982), documenta 9 (1992) and the Venice Biennale in 1984, and was professor of painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1988 to 2003.
Numerous prizes honour his oeuvre (among others the Rembrandt Prize of the Goethe Foundation, Basel, 1981 and the Aachen Art Prize in 1985). His works are represented in major international museums: In the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Albertina Wien, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museum of Modern Art, New York, to name a few.
