Polke was born in Oels, an east German region, in 1941. His family soon fled to west Germany in 1953, settling in Dusseldorf where Polke studied at the Dusseldorf Art Academy between the years 1961 and 1967. While still in school, Polke, along with Gerhard Richter and Konrad Fischer, founded the Captialist Realism movement, which incorporated aspects of American Pop art’s interest in consumer and popular imagery with abstraction and an emphasis on a progressive use of mediums. The movement also instilled into their works satirical commentary about consumerism, the political climate in Germany at the time–even the movement’s name was a play on the Russian art movement of Socialist Realism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmar_Polke
Reblogged this on parkergarden.