Sigmar Polke (1941 – 2010), a German painter who for many recast pop art and revived painting in Europe, passed away on Friday, June 10.
The artist who used Ben-Day dots, old etchings and even potatoes (for sculptures), brought a new vibrancy to painting and art making in the 1980s. His first New York show at Holly Solomon led what many saw as a fresh and aggressive charge to pictorial expression. Americans like Julian Schnabel, David Salle and Richard Prince rode the oblique figurative + abstraction train for decades. Much of that owed to the oftentimes irreverent German artist. One can see Polke’s influence all over Europe and in the US – a feverish desire to combine everything and squeeze out a biting political juice. Polke was 69.
