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A.R. Penck ( -) DIE FRAGE NACH DER STAATS... signed with title and a number of inscriptions in pencil and pen on the reverse acrylic with pencil on paper 23 by 31,5cm SYMBOLS AND NEO-EXPRESSIONISM IN POST-WAR GERMANY Since A.R. Penck’s death in 2017 there has been considerable interest in his artwork. Posthumous solo exhibitions have showcased his bold, restless work, filled with his own self-created symbols. These include A.R. Penck: Paintings from the 1980s and Memorial to an Unknown East German Soldier, both held at the Michael Werner Gallery in New York in 2018, as well as the acclaimed I think in Pictures, a show of Penck’s featured works from the 1970s and 1980s held at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology at Oxford University in 2019. Penck was born Ralf Winkler in Dresden in 1939. He adopted his chosen pseudonym after the paleogeologist Albrecht Penck out of necessity when the East German State Security began to confiscate his works in the 1960s. His art was deemed not to conform to the ideology of the state. In 1969 the Michel Werner Gallery hosted Penck's first solo show, signalling the beginning of a relationship that would be fortuitous and supportive throughout the artist’s career. Exhibiting in New York was only possible because the artist had changed his name, confusing border officials and allowing his work to pass through the Berlin wall. Michel Werner himself smuggled some of Penck’s artworks out of East Berlin, and arranged for friends in the city to deliver art materials to Penck in order for him to continue his practice.Penck’s Standart works are characterised by a myriad of pictographic marks that the artist viewed as the ‘building blocks’ he used to communicate his ideology, leaving clues and riddles for the viewers of his paintings in this lexicon of coded language. The artist began to explore how symbols, signs and numbers could be abstracted, creating a common language which could express the sadness and loss of post-World War II Germany in the Cold War era. An example is the letters ‘A’ and ‘B’ it is understood that he is referencing the capitalist West Germany and communist East Germany. Due to this aesthetic, Penck is often associated with artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, although it is more likely that the artist’s style emerged spontaneously. He had little access to the work of his Western contemporaries whilst living in East Germany (German Democratic Republic) which heavily censored any influence that threatened the state. There has been a resurgence of interest in A.R. Penck’s work in recent years, at a time when contemporary artists are exploring the tenuous relationship of abstraction and figuration, and personal and recognisable iconographies and symbols. This has resulted in his work gaining momentum on the secondary market.Penck’s mixed media work, Die Frage nach der Staats Sicherheit zeigt meine eigene falsche Haltung translates to The Question of State Security Shows My Own Wrong Attitude. The artwork is a recto verso: the front side of the paper displays a pencil and acrylic work representing purple mountains with a sunset sky, while the reverse is covered with various pencil and pen inscriptions by the artist in German, including the title of the work. The statement may be that the recto was approved by the German State Security because it was mild, acceptable, benign art. The real artwork is hidden, in this case deliberately, on the reverse of the work. - S.D.A R Penck, Neo-Expressionist Painter Whose Work Reflected on the Postwar German Condition, Dies at 77, Alex Greenberger, ARTnews, accessed 19 January, 2020: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/a-r-penck-painter-whose-workreflected-on-the-postwar-german-condition-dies-at-77-8236/A R Penck: I Think in Pictures, Ashmolean, accessed 20 January, 2020, https: //ashmolean.org/event/penckA Tribute to A R Penck, John-Paul Stonard, Apollo:The International Art Magazine, accessed 20 January, 2020: https://www.apollo-magazine.com/a-tribute-to-a-r-penck/