Sigmar Polke made art out of the leftovers of mass printing. In the 1960s he copied the dot screens of newspaper photographs by hand until the picture wobbled between image and pattern. He painted over upholstery fabrics, so a printed floral or polka-dot ground fought with the figure on top. Later he soaked fabric in resin until it turned translucent and let pigments react on the surface. For anyone who works with halftones, overprints and patterns, his work shows how much expression lives in the gaps between reproduction and original.
A note on images: none of the Sigmar Polke works held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago or the Cleveland Museum of Art is flagged public domain, so this guide describes his work in text only. For historic prints that are cleared for reuse, browse the printmaking collection in the MGD museum inspiration collection.
Who was Sigmar Polke?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art records him as German, born in Oleśnica (then Oels, in Silesia) in 1941 and died in Cologne in 2010. Published biographies, among them the Städel Museum’s, give his birth date as 13 February 1941, and his death in Cologne is usually dated 10 June 2010 (one gallery biography gives 11 June). He grew up in postwar Germany and studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the early 1960s, where he met the fellow students he would soon exhibit with.
He later taught at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg; the Kunsthaus Zürich chronology lists a guest professorship there in the early 1970s and a professorship from 1977 to 1991.
A career in key works
Capitalist Realism (1963). As students in Düsseldorf, Polke, Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg (later the dealer Konrad Fischer), with Manfred Kuttner, staged a 1963 exhibition in a Düsseldorf shop space and gave their approach the ironic name Capitalist Realism. The Städel Museum describes it as a German answer to Pop art that pushed against the established art of the day.
Early drawings. The Met holds Young Peas (1963), a ballpoint pen drawing with traces of white glossy paint, and the Art Institute of Chicago holds an untitled 1967 watercolour with ballpoint pen on newsprint. These quick, deadpan studies of consumer goods set the tone: ordinary images, ordinary tools.
The raster paintings (from 1963). Polke painted enlarged halftone dots by hand, copying newspaper photographs. Bunnies (1966), at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, is synthetic polymer on canvas, about 149 by 99 centimetres, and is based on a press photograph of Playboy Club hostesses, according to the Hirshhorn and Britannica. Reviewers of MoMA’s 2014 retrospective noted that he did not copy the dots faithfully, so the grid slips and clots.
Prints and multiples (1966–72). The Art Institute of Chicago and the Met both hold Girlfriends I (Freundinnen I) (1967), an offset lithograph that enlarges a halftone until the dots become the picture. The AIC holds Weekend House, a screenprint from the 1967 portfolio Graphics of Capitalist Realism, published 1968, and the portfolio Higher Beings Command (Höhere Wesen befehlen), dated 1968, fourteen offset lithographs from photographs made 1966–68. MoMA credits Christof Kohlhöfer as collaborator. In its “palm” images, gloves, buttons, balloons and bread are arranged into the shape of a palm tree; the St. Louis Art Museum reads them as a joke about the postwar taste for exotic houseplants.
Fabric and resin (1980s). The Art Institute of Chicago holds Watchtower with Geese (Hochsitz mit Gänsen) (1987/88), resin and acrylic paint on various fabrics. Other sources describe how he soaked such fabrics in resin until they turned translucent, so the stretcher and seams show through the image.
Athanor (1986). Polke represented West Germany at the 42nd Venice Biennale with an installation named after an alchemist’s furnace, and won the Golden Lion, according to the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach and the Palazzo Grassi. Accounts of the installation describe wall areas painted with pigments whose colour shifted as the light in the room changed, and crystal, meteorite fragments and quicksilver placed among the paintings.
Late work. The Met holds I Live In My Own World, But It’s Ok, They Know Me Here (2002), mixed media on fabric, about three by five metres. His last major public project, completed in 2009 after he won an invited competition in 2006, is a set of windows for the Grossmünster in Zurich, seven of them made from thin slices of agate, according to Zurich Tourism and Parkett’s book on the project.
What to look at in a Sigmar Polke work
The dot as a mark. In the raster paintings each dot is hand-painted, so it varies in size, density and edge. Stand close and you see a pattern; stand back and an image appears, but never quite resolves. The imperfection is the point.
Ground versus figure. When he painted on patterned fabric, the printed pattern was not hidden. A figure might sit over stripes, flowers or a commercial print, and both compete for attention. Nothing sits on a neutral white ground.
Layers that disagree. His larger paintings stack images, line drawings and colour fields that do not line up. One layer may be a projection-traced outline, another a pour of pigment, another a fabric seam.
Translucency. In the resin works, the stretcher bars and the back of the cloth show through. The structure of the object becomes part of the composition.
Technique: print logic, by hand
- Hand-made halftones. He enlarged a newspaper image and transcribed its dot screen with stencils, brushes or the end of a tool, keeping the irregularities.
- Offset and screenprint. His editions used the same commercial processes as the images he borrowed, so the print is both subject and medium.
- Found textiles. Instead of plain canvas he used decorator fabrics and bought cloth, letting the manufacturer’s pattern become part of the composition.
- Chemistry. From the 1980s he mixed pigments with solvents, varnishes and resins to provoke reactions he could only partly control, as the Kunsthaus Zürich describes; the results range from pigment clouds to effects frozen in lacquer.
Compare his hand-painted dots with the cleaner Ben-Day dots in our guide to Roy Lichtenstein, and with the screenprint repetition in our Andy Warhol guide. For another artist who treated found photographs as raw material, see John Baldessari.
How designers can borrow Sigmar Polke’s ideas
- Make the screen visible. Enlarge a halftone until the dots read as shapes, then nudge them by hand so the grid breathes. It works for posters, album art and editorial openers.
- Design on a printed ground. Put type or illustration over a busy found pattern, such as a stripe, check or vintage floral, and let them compete. Keep the overlay simple so the clash reads as intentional.
- Misregister on purpose. Offset layers by a few millimetres in risograph or screenprint so colour and line disagree, as his layered paintings do.
- Use translucency. Tracing paper, vellum jackets and frosted acrylic let structure show through, which echoes his resin-soaked fabrics.
- Control the accident. Set rules, such as one pour, one fold or one drop of ink, and accept what happens inside them. Then pull colours from the result with our image colour picker.
Polke’s paintings, prints and photographs are in copyright, so use his methods with your own images, not his works.
Where to see Sigmar Polke’s work
The Art Institute of Chicago holds Watchtower with Geese, Higher Beings Command and Girlfriends I; the Met holds Young Peas and I Live In My Own World, But It’s Ok, They Know Me Here; the Hirshhorn holds Bunnies; and MoMA holds a set of Higher Beings Command. The agate windows are in place at the Grossmünster in Zurich.
Frequently asked questions
What is Sigmar Polke known for?
He is known for hand-painted halftone dot paintings such as Bunnies (1966), for paintings on printed fabric, for the Golden Lion he won at the 1986 Venice Biennale with Athanor, and for the agate windows of Zurich’s Grossmünster.
What is Capitalist Realism?
It is the ironic name Polke, Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg gave their approach in Düsseldorf in 1963. It borrowed the images of West German consumer culture, a German parallel to American Pop art.
What are the Polke dots?
They are hand-painted versions of the halftone screens used to print photographs in newspapers. Polke enlarged and copied them imperfectly, so the image breaks down into pattern up close.
Can I use Sigmar Polke’s work in my designs?
No. He died in 2010 and his works are in copyright. You can learn from his methods, such as hand-made halftones, printed grounds and misregistered layers, but make your own images rather than reproducing his.
