Sigmar Polke

Private Collection, Germany
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the overall tonality is deeper and richer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good and original condition. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
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With the myriad forms and textures that compose its surface, Untitled from 1984 is typical of Sigmar Polke’s best work of the 1980s. Organic shapes reminiscent of enlarged microscopic organisms entwine with abstracted passages to deliver an exhilarating challenge to the senses. Created when Polke was already an internationally renowned figure in the art world, Untitled belongs to the artist’s body of work that was made after his participation in Documenta V (1972) and VII (1982) in Kassel and won the Prize for Painting at the XIII Bienal de São Paulo in 1975. Untitled is paradigmatic of the artist’s eclectic style, one that defies any attempt at categorization. Indeed, curator Jutta Nestgard has described his art as “a large, serious field of investigation that brings with it continually deeper insight and greater knowledge” (Jutta Nestgard, ‘Sigmar Polke - Aparizione in the North’ in: Exhibition Catalogue, Oslo, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art; Humlebaek, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Sigmar Polke - Alchimist, 2001, p. 14).

Polke devoted most of the 1970s and ‘80s to investigating the chemical processes related to both photography and painting. Exploring his passion for photography, Polke began making photo-based works in the early ‘60s. Over the course of the next two decades his curious nature led him to take an interest in photography’s developing process and the associated elements of chance and spontaneity. This was a time in the artist's life narrated by liberal experimentation. The search for new sensorial experiences was an important part of Polke's artistic development during these years: traveling to remote destinations in countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Australia and Brazil, meeting the locals, learning from their culture and experimenting with mind-altering substances. Polke’s work of the '70s and '80s reflects this boundary-breaking sensorial and material exploration; the extraordinary mixture of techniques, substances, abstraction and figuration invokes a distinctly synaesthetic quality.

The artist reached the crux of this exploration two years after the execution of Untitled, when he was commissioned to design the German Federal Republic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of 1986 - for which he was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Universally recognized as the highlight of the Biennale, the exhibition, entitled Athanor, included chunks of crystal, meteorite and quicksilver among the exhibited paintings. Like an alchemist in his particular laboratory, Polke created paintings that altered depending on the environmental conditions they were shown in. Increasingly intricate, Polke’s canvases of the ‘80s fused endless layers of meanings, art-historical quotations and references to the artist’s own art and personal history. Watchtower, a work prestigiously housed in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, is powerfully demonstrative of this multivalent pictorial expression. Executed the very same year and reminiscent of this iconic masterpiece, Untitled is an amalgamation of different textures and materials, that blend harmoniously yet spontaneously, to subvert compositional logic. Disregarding the use of a traditional canvas as a ground for his work, Polke used a combination of synthetic and natural fabrics that served as a base for his experiments. White paint was applied onto the surface of the present work in a multiplicity of ways; marks seem to suggest the application of pigment by means of an almost dry brush, while others show drips where the paint was liquid. Paint and resin alike comingle and flow across the canvas to create this mesmerizing conglomeration of forms and substances.

Mysteriously appearing in sections of the work, Polke allowed for parts of the stretcher to show through the fabric of Untitled. The incorporation of the canvas’ functional structure into the finalized artwork invoked a radical gesture, a break with the hierarchy and conventions that privileged the picture plane. When standing in front of Untitled it is possible to discern the space beyond the confines of the two-dimensional pictorial surface. Rays of light penetrate the areas where paint is thinnest; Polke's composition is herein active and ever-changing. With its wide array of colours and contrasted areas of thick resins and thinner paint, Untitled epitomises Sigmar Polke’s attitude towards making art and life: an alchemist, photographer, explorer, investigator and painter delving into material and sensorial exploration.