Texts by Elena Geuna and Guy Tosatto

The artist who dared put into question the parameters of ordinary vision. One of the main exponents of Capitalist Realism—a current that arose in the 1970s in opposition to both the Socialist Realism widespread in the countries of Eastern Europe and Western pop art—Sigmar Polke was a tireless experimenter of techniques, art materials, and chemical-alchemical processes. He created figurative paintings that drew on a vast iconographic repertoire, often inspired by everyday life, and abstract works with a powerful symbolic value, sometimes created by chance through reactions between paint and other products. The book reproduces over eighty-five of his works (including photographs and sculptures, along with numerous paintings), giving a full account of Polke’s reflections and studies made over his fifty-year career.