A. R. Penck

(German, 1939-2017)

Standart TTABTTT 5
1984

Footnotes

Provenance
Waddington Galleries, London
Private Collection, New York
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, 8 October 1986, Lot 95
Germans Van Eck Gallery, New York (AP102)
Guy Pieters Gallery, Knokke
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner circa 1987

Exhibited
London, Waddington Galleries, A.R. Penck, 1984



Teeming with the symbols, cyphers and metaphors embedded in A.R. Penck's practice and executed at a pivotal moment in his career, Standard TTABTTT 5 is consummate example from the artist's celebrated oeuvre. Having remained in the same collection for over thirty years, the present work is a rare opportunity to acquire a painting, not only entirely fresh to the market, but also permeated with the intense atmosphere and raw vitality found in all of the artists best known and most coveted works in private and institutional collections.

Born in Dresden in 1939, Ralf Winkler was old enough to see and remember the city burning in 1945. The traumatic experience and his life in a war-torn and soon to be separated Germany would influence his life and work profoundly. Taking the decision to remain in East Berlin after the wall had been erected in 1961, Winkler experienced artistic isolation, surveillance and censorship by the secret police. In 1957 he began a lifelong friendship with Georg Kern (later to become Baselitz) and after meeting the Gallerist Michael Werner in 1968, he started illicitly exhibiting in the West. To avoid the unwanted attention of the state and facilitate smuggling his paintings across the border Winkler used a variety of pseudonyms, including "Mike Hammer", "Theodor Marx", "a. Y" and just "Y". It was "A.R. Penck", adopted after reading the work of the geographer and geologist Albrecht Penck that eventually stuck.

Penck's iconic 'Standart' works employ a lexicon of pictograph-like marks he referred to as building blocks. First developed in the 1960s and derived from the words 'standard' and 'art', with an echo of the German word 'Standarte', signifying a banner or flag, the term represented a universally accessible aesthetic, a standard art for all, which would transcend language, boundaries and borders and addressed complex, socio-political themes. Penck claimed never to have heard of conceptualism at the start of his career which would go on to span five decades, but whilst his art developed more or less in isolation behind the wall, it soon found wide spread appreciation in the West especially in the New York art scene that welcomed him with open arms. In 1980, Penck was forced to emigrate to the West and became part of a milieu of Neo-Expressionist painters which included Markus Lüpertz and Jörg Immendorff. In New York he met likeminded artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat with whom he shared a great mutual respect and artistic exchange that is visible in both artists' works from that time. In 1984, Penck payed homage to his friend with a poem that was published in Basquiat's exhibition catalogue of the same year.

In Standard TTABTTT 5 a monumental, almost life-sized central stick figure, part man, part abstract primitive deity, is surrounded by the rudimentary shapes and symbols that form Penck's artistic language. Executed in the vibrant colours Penck began to use more after emigrating to the West, the work conveys a vibrant energy and confident execution of an artist at the height of his career. Whilst this phase of his life coincided with a period of disillusionment caused by the major upheaval in his life, it was also a time of significant artistic recognition. The theme of duality in Standard TTABTTT 5, red against blue, a figure split by use of subtle colour variations, seems highly politically charged and appears to echo the strained relations between the Federal and Democratic Republics, two entirely opposed ideologies of Soviet Communism and Western Capitalism. The fluid, vibrant brush strokes and rhythmic composition pay homage to the artists love of Jazz music; Penck himself was a drummer and played in the band Triple Trip Touch in the late 1980s.

Whilst Penck is often described as one of the fathers of Graffitism, his work is difficult to put into any category and his legacy is yet to be fully evaluated. Whilst his work is often associated with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Penck's inspirations were manifold, ranging from Ernst Ludwig Kirchner to ancient cave paintings. His colourful pictorial language represents a constant dialogue between Primitivism and Art Brut, between painting and Street Art. Penck's work was included in the ground-breaking Zeitgeist show at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (1982), A New Spirit in Painting at the Royal Academy of Arts (1981) and New Art, Tate (1983). Penck went on to participate in the 1984 Venice Biennale, the same year Standard TTABTTT 5 was painted, as well as in four editions of Documenta. His work fell out of favour after the heyday of the 1980s, but in recent years regained relevance and is seen as a significant influence on many contemporary artists. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Kunstmuseum Basel, and the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.