Galerie Hajo Müller, Cologne

Acquired directꦆly from the above by the🎐 present owner in 1987

London, Tate Gallery; Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; and Hamburg, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, The Froehlich Foundation. German and American Art from Beuys and Warhol, 1996-97, p. 117, no. 225, illustrated in colour

Liverpool, Tate Gallery, Contemporary German and American Art from the Froehlich Collection, 1999

Karlsruhe, Museum für Neue Kunst, Sigmar Polke: Werke aus der Sammlung Froehlich, 2000, pp. 102-03, no. 64, illustrated in colour

London, Tate Modern, on loan to the coll🥀ection, 2003-🅷04

Karlsruhe, Museum für Neue Kunst 💫im ZKM, on loa༺n to the collection, 2004

Baden-Baden, Museum Frieder Burda; and Vienna, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Polke: eine Retrospektive, 2007, pp. 20ꦐ0-01, ൩no. 146, illustrated in colour 

Colour: The colour in the printed catalogue is fairly accurate, although the illustration fails to convey the luminescence of the orange paint and the metallic quality of the gold paint. Condition: The sheet is attached verso to the backing board. There are a few minor creases and associated short tears and small losses in places to the outer edges, which are inherent to the artist's working process.
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A multi-layered and fluid work, with its fusion of abstraction and figuration, appropriation of Pop imagery, Ohne Titel (Porträtist) strikingly experiments with several elements that were of particular importance to Sigmar Polke's artistic output during the 1970s. The present work finds its genesis in the monumental ten-part series We Petty Bourgeouis, executed between 1974 and 1976, which consists of a collection of large-format gouaches on paper, merging the abstract with overlapping figures and quotations drawn from contemporaneous popular culture.

In Ohne Titel (Porträtist) the viewer is able to discern four figures, consisting of two portraitists and two sitters, through the arching sweep of the blue, yellow and olive-green gouache. The figures have been rendered with a profusion of overlapping and condensing lines, reminiscent of both photography, with its multiples and re-exposures, and the image flow of animated films, two mediums that profoundly interested Polke during the 1970s. Evelyn Weiss’ description of Polke’s work from this decade is apt: she states that the pictorial elements are "layered on top of one another, intersect or shine through; the front and back are in constant motion; no sooner than you have adjusted your focus, the so-called background comes forward" (Evelyn Weiss quoted in: Petra Lange-Berndt and Dietmar Rübel, Eds., Sigmar Polke: We Petty Bourgeois, Cologne 2001, p. 33).

Ohne Titel (Porträtist) embodies Polke’s recurrent enthusiasm in juxtaposing the figurative with the abstract, expounding his belief that these techniques sh♛ould have a complimentary relationship, rather than being considered diametrically opposed. However, this relationship is also complex and the superimposition of images from popular culture with non-figurative painting techniques creates a certain tension. With these jux🌳tapositions and tensions, the artist is able to create a dreamlike, hallucinogenic world, in which reality and meaning are questioned; a phenomenon emblematic of Polke’s career.

The figures themselves are created using a graphic Pop art vocabulary, directly comparable to works from the We Petty Bourgeois series, such as Supermarkets or Can You Always Believe Your Eyes?. However, Polke’s multiplicity and simultan🐬eity of stylistic elements in the 1970s made him a specifically postmodern Pop artist and, indeed, by 1979, the year of the present work’s creation, Pop art co♛uld be characterised as little more than a historical positon in both Germany and the United States. Here, perhaps, it is the graphic line synonymous with Pop imagery, rather than the imagery itself, that attracts Polke’s attention, allowing him to create such a striking contrast with the undulous waves of gouache that encircle the composition. The figures are also a testament to Polke’s extraordinary ability as a draftsman, a skill that is not emphasised enough, perhaps due to his predominately ‘de-skilled’ and simplistic drawings of the 1960s.

Constantly in flux, with its intelligent combination of line and colour, abstraction and figuration, gouache and pencil, Ohne Titel (Porträtist) expresses several themes consistent in Polke’s 1970s output and, with its nebulous and merging clouds of colour, foreshadows some of the effects created by Polke in his chemical and alchemical experimentations of the 1980s. Ohne Titel (Porträtist) should then be considered both as a significant work of♋ the 1970s in its own right and as a critical sꦑtep in Polke’s unrelenting artistic evolution.