A.R. Penck. Retrospektive

Perhaps more than any of his immediate contemporaries, A.R. Penck revived painting as a relevant practice for postwar culture in Germany. His name now seems synonymous with a painting style that is figurative and political in content, a style both gestural and replete with semiotic impact. After his expatriation from East Germany in 1980, Penck coined a universal vocabulary in which the "sign-making" character of prehistoric painting is fused with the content of contemporary history and the concerns of modern science in a single, memorable picture world. A.R. Penck: Works 1961-2006 presents a selection of the artist's large-scale paintings, as well as artist's books, sculptures and objects from 1960 to the present, all of which are discussed against the background of shifts in the contexts and reception of his work.