A.R. Penck

He was born in Dresden on 5 October 1939, with the name of Ralf Winkler. He lives with his mother, a teacher by profession, and with his younger sister in the popular neighborhood of Nausslitz.

1949-1960

He begins to paint at the age of ten. After graduating, he attended a drawing and painting course at the Volkshochschule, where he entered the circle of Jürgen Böttcher, known as “Strawalde”. He interrupts his internship at an advertising agency close to the party; he applies for admission to a sculpture course, then to courses at the Academy of Art in Dresden and Berlin-Weißensee, but without success. He meets Georg Baselitz. He takes up a studio together with the Dresden sculptor Peter Mokolies. He experiments with plaster sculpture; he works on sets, portraits, drawings and woodcuts inspired by works by Rembrandt, van Rijn and Pablo Picasso.

1961-1967

His only official participation in an exhibition organized in the GDR was held in 1961, the day after the construction of the Berlin Wall. The public of the "workers and peasants state" reacts to the portraits of him with heated criticism. He redefines his painting in relation to the scientific vision of socialism: he reads texts on the history of philosophy and science, from Kant and Newton to the most recent texts on psychology, cybernetics, information theory. He underlines the message of the paintings through symbols and figures: he creates Weltbilder and Systembilder. In 1963 he presented a provocative mural in Dresden on the division of Germany. He is increasingly interested in the empirical sciences, in particular in some emerging disciplines such as cognitive science and cybernetics. In a letter to Baselitz he observes: «I have given up on artistic questions in the sense of traditional painting and I deal with mathematics, cybernetics and theoretical physics. What I have in mind is a kind of physics of human society ... "

In 1964 he set up his own atelier in the Neustadt district of Dresden. In 1965, through Baselitz, he made the acquaintance of the gallery owner Michael Werner. In collaboration with Makolies he designs a mural painting for the project of a concert hall in Dresden; he tries to be admitted to the official association of GDR artists. He develops a strong interest in jazz and its various forms of expression.

1949-1960

He begins to paint at the age of ten. After graduating, he attended a drawing and painting course at the Volkshochschule, where he entered the circle of Jürgen Böttcher, known as “Strawalde”. He interrupts his internship at an advertising agency close to the party; he applies for admission to a sculpture course, then to courses at the Academy of Art in Dresden and Berlin-Weißensee, but without success. He meets Georg Baselitz. He takes up a studio together with the Dresden sculptor Peter Mokolies. He experiments with plaster sculpture; he works on sets, portraits, drawings and woodcuts inspired by works by Rembrandt, van Rijn and Pablo Picasso.

1961-1967

His only official participation in an exhibition organized in the GDR was held in 1961, the day after the construction of the Berlin Wall. The public of the "workers and peasants state" reacts to the portraits of him with heated criticism. He redefines his painting in relation to the scientific vision of socialism: he reads texts on the history of philosophy and science, from Kant and Newton to the most recent texts on psychology, cybernetics, information theory. He underlines the message of the paintings through symbols and figures: he creates Weltbilder and Systembilder. In 1963 he presented a provocative mural in Dresden on the division of Germany. He is increasingly interested in the empirical sciences, in particular in some emerging disciplines such as cognitive science and cybernetics. In a letter to Baselitz he observes: «I have given up on artistic questions in the sense of traditional painting and I deal with mathematics, cybernetics and theoretical physics. What I have in mind is a kind of physics of human society ... "

In 1964 he set up his own atelier in the Neustadt district of Dresden. In 1965, through Baselitz, he made the acquaintance of the gallery owner Michael Werner. In collaboration with Makolies he designs a mural painting for the project of a concert hall in Dresden; he tries to be admitted to the official association of GDR artists. He develops a strong interest in jazz and its various forms of expression.

1968-1972

On the occasion of his first exhibition in the Michael Werner gallery in Cologne, he assumes the pseudonym of “A.R. Penck ". He calls his elementary doctrine of the figure Standart and expresses it in numerous artist books, the first copies of which were published as early as 1970. This is how he explains the artistic concept: "A method for making information products, whose production processes fall in the field of the describable; in this way the processes can be described in technical terms »3. First monumental versions of the Standart figure. He establishes contacts with West Germany, attracting the attention of the local art scene to himself. The exchange is intensified by the meeting with some gallery owners and curators, including Harald Szeemann and Dieter Koepplin who visit him from Switzerland. In 1969 he completed a mural destined for an event in Antwerp. His request for admission to the association of GDR artists is rejected. He founded the artistic group “Lücke-TPT” in Dresden, which creates collective works based on the Standart figure. Standart models and some experimental films are born. Later he developed the idea of concentrating on traditional, "manual" types of works. He can only exhibit in private spaces; the surveillance by the security bodies is intensified. The situation in the West is different: starting from 1971 his works are exhibited in Basel and Krefeld; in 1972 at documenta 5 in Kassel. He confronts the main exponents of the Western art scene: M. Duchamp, A. Warhol, J. Beuys. In close collaboration with the curators, he designs exhibitions in Halifax, Canada, then in Switzerland and the Netherlands.