“A.R. Penck: Early Works” at Michael Werner Gallery is the first comprehensive exhibition in London of German painter, sculptor, and graphic artist A.R. Penck’s rarely seen early work from the 1960s and 1970s. Providing a unique insight into Penck’s distinctive style and sensibility, the exhibition is focused entirely on the artist’s important early paintings and first sculptures.Born Ralf Winkler in Dresden in 1939, A.R. Penck was driven by his interest political, informational, interpersonal systems and the rules that govern them. His iconic “stick figures” and the graphically intense signs and symbols of his signature mature style reflect his ambition to create a universal pictorial language as a means of clearly and legibly addressing political and social issues.Penck’s early works, many of which are modest in size and created using found and improvised materials, reveal the origins of his highly personalized vocabulary of simple dots, lines, abstract forms, and stick figures. The vitality and urgency of these superb works belie their apparent humility, reflecting what is described as Penck’s need for “communication over mere depiction”According to Michael Werner Gallery, Penck’s reductive pictorial vocabulary and unfussy painterly style has made it easy for unsympathetic viewers to dismiss Penck as primitive or neo-expressionist. “A.R. Penck: Early Works” aims to redress this issue by highlighting “the surprising formal and conceptual origins of Penck’s oeuvre.”“A.R. Penck: Early Works” is at Michael Werner Gallery in London until February 20, 2016
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