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NEWS FROM THE GETTY
DATE: February 12, 2007 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEW GETTY EXHIBITION SHOWCASES THE WORK OF PREEMINENT PAINTER WHO USED PHOTOGRAPHY AS HIS SKETCHBOOK
Sigmar Polke: Photographs, 1968-1972
Sigmar Polke At the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Center German, born 1941 Düsseldorf, 1969 February 20-May 20, 2007 Gelatin silver print The J. Paul Getty Museum © Sigmar Polke
LOS ANGELES—A dynamic presentation of Sigmar Polke’s early photographic work will be on view in Sigmar Polke: Photographs, 1968-1972, at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Center, February 20-May 20, 2007. The exhibition showcases 35 photographs made by Sigmar Polke (German, b. 1941) from an exuberant period in the artist’s career. One of the most significant painters of the post-war generation, Polke is an artist whose work defies categorization by style, theme, or medium. By the early 1960s, he had gained recognition as a preeminent painter in Germany. He turned his attention to photography in the mid-1960s, using the camera and the darkroom to explore the expressive potential of photographic materials and chemistry. Teaching himself to print, Polke disregarded darkroom procedures and developed photographs in multivalent styles that emulated his predilection to layer unrelated subjects and techniques in his painting. By doing so, he encourages viewers to participate in the excitement of discovery as they attempt to decipher the images. The exhibition displays a selection of Polke’s photographs; all were made with a 35mm camera, affording him both spontaneity and precision in his work. Among these selections are still life compositions of objects that the artist found in his studio or excerpted from popular culture, as well as close-ups and multiple exposures. Experimenting with a wide variety of styles and subjects, his work brings together imagery from contradictory or unexpected sources, both historical and contemporary.
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Born in the eastern German town of Oels (now Oleśnica, Poland) in 1941, Polke moved with his family to West Germany in 1953, and began studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1961. Together with classmate Gerhard Richter, Polke formulated Capital Realism, an art movement that, like Pop Art in the United States, appropriated its pictorial language from advertising and popular culture. The presentation will complement the exhibition, From Caspar David Friedrich to Gerhard Richter: German Paintings from Dresden, also on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Center through April 29, 2007. The Getty holds the largest number of early photographs by Polke of any American art museum. This comprehensive body of work reveals his early fascination with the medium, and creates a window onto the world of a painter who used photography as a kind of sketchbook. Acquired in 1984, this group of photographs constitutes an important component of the Getty Museum's holdings of work by painters who have turned to the camera, including Edgar Degas and Thomas Eakins in the 19th century, Magritte, Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, and Charles Sheeler during various Modernist movements between the Wars, and Andy Warhol and Chuck Close in more recent times. The exhibition is curated by Virginia Heckert, associate curator, in the Department of Photographs.
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