Galerie Michael Werner, Cologne
Acquired from the above by the present owner in November 1971

Krefeld, Museum Haus Lange, Zeichen als Verständigung: A.R. Penck - Bücher und Bilder, 1971
Krefeld, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Sammlung Helga und Walther Lauffs - Amerikanische und europäische Kunst der sechziger und siebziger Jahre, 1983-84, p. 208, no. 263, illustrated

Colours: The colours in the catalogue are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality of the yellow is more pale. Condition: This work is in very good condition.
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In the late 1960s the artist Ralf Winkler began to use his now famous pseudonym 'A.R. Penck' after the Saxon geologist and specialist on the Ice Age Albrecht Penck (1858-1945).

"As regards painting, I can say that for me the name [A.R. Penck] stands for a concept which I had ꧅just developed at this time and which had to do with information", says Penck. "I saw a certain analogy between deposited information and geology. At that time I had to work my way through the entire history of art, and then came across t🧜he ice age and cave paintings."[1]

 

Penck was living in East Germany, experimenting with the use of symbols, signs and writing to invent a kind of universal pictorial language. He wanted to encourage a generally understandable communication and tried to display certain cohesions in a complex world by developing a sign language. He was to name this system Standart – a neologism of the words standard and the German "Standarte" (flag), also containing the German "Bestand" as existence and continuance and "Art" both in the English sense as wꦫell as in the German meaning of nature or sort.

 

In 1970/71 Penck first started to transfer Standart onto big canvases. In Standart Ur End (Lot 203) we find some of the earliest exa😼mples of his famous stickmen, which should become a leitඣmotif over the years. They are surrounded by words and symbols like the eagle on the upper right.

Standart Problem Technik (Lot 202) seems to be the alphabet of Standart at first sight. Remarkably, most characteristic symbols in Penck´s forthcoming oeuvre feature on this painting. But more than a decoding of the language system Standart, this work can be seen as a reflection on the possibilities and op💜tions of art itself.

 

Having been successful in the Federal Republic of Germany with his first exhibition in a museum (Haus Lange in Krefeld) in 1971 and after participating at the Documenta 5 in 1972, he had not been heard in his own socialist system in the East. Therefore Penck declared that Standart had failed i🐈n 1972. With this failure he also abdicated the closely connected pseudonyꦇm A.R. Penck for a while.

[1] Christine Lutz: " A𝓀.R. Penck: Painter and Sculptor", in: A.R. Penck. Memory. Model. Memorial,ꦑ exhib. cat. by Dieter Brunner et. al., 1999, p.13.