Francisco de Goya lived at the height of his career, from the second half of the 18th century until his death in 1828, during what universal history calls the end of the Modern Age. The German artist Sigmar Polke (1941-2010) grew up when another era was also ending: the defeat of Germany in the Second World War, which led him to live first on the eastern side (Silesia) and then on the western side (Düsseldorf). When the German traveled to Madrid in 1982 to learn about Goya’s work, he felt an immediate connection with how the Aragonese used, like him, satire, the macabre and criticism to reflect a society that was changing. The dazzle was such that Polke always dreamed of his works being shown alongside those of the Spaniard.
The wish now comes true with the opening of the exhibition on Tuesday Sigmar Polke. Affinities revealed. Through 40 pieces (paintings, photographs, drawings and objects) by what is considered one of the most influential contemporary European artists, the exhibition shows the influence that the author of the works had on him. black paints, before and after seeing their production in person. “The fall of an established world and the beginning of another that is yet to come, but with a prevailing reluctance not to assume it, unites Polke with Goya. The Spanish questioned the modernity that he saw born, and the German knew both regimes of the divided post-war Germany; “he experienced the consequences of a war,” explains Commissioner Gloria Moure.
Moure has been studying Polke since his doctoral thesis and was in charge of the two individual exhibitions of him in Spain: in 1993 and in 2000. This is the first time that a solo exhibition of him has been held in Madrid. “In the eighties he spent six weeks here with almost daily visits to El Prado. We talked a lot about El Prado and, when I came to see the museum, he asked me if a series of paintings were still there. I am convinced that my father would be moved to see his works exhibited with Goya’s,” the German author’s daughter, Anna Polke, said at the presentation. The exhibition reveals the affinities between both creators in three fields: the artistic, political and social circumstances that affected them; the dark iconography they shared and the specific workmanship of the painting.
Polke jumped onto the world art scene after founding, in 1963, together with Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg, the movement capitalist realisma mockery of the socialist realism that was then the official artistic doctrine of the Soviet Union. The group drew on the pop art of Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein to appropriate the language of advertising and satirize the objects that arrived from the United States and the free market model with them. However, when Polke faced Goya’s paintings in person for the first time, in the eighties, he had already abandoned that stage and was going through a phase of prolific experimentation. In the Prado exhibition, his works are hung with a host of materials, such as gouache, acrylic, ballpoint pen, printed fabric, lacquer, synthetic resin, tracing paper or lapis lazuli.
Interest in the magical and paranormal
The work of the Aragonese that most impressed him, The old ones or Time (1810-1812), is not in Spain, but in the Palace of Fine Arts of Lille, which has loaned the piece to be exhibited in this current exhibition. Polke traveled to France twice to photograph the painting and requested an x-ray of it. “It attracted him in a special way by connecting with his interest in the magical and the paranormal, close to its symbology. The way of working with the ghostly combined with humor is seen throughout the entire exhibition,” says Moure, who is also the author of the book Sigmar Polke. Paintings, photographs and films (2005). Skulls, the devil in the form of a goat, ghosts, disturbing faces and death are in paintings like Ashes upon ashes (1992), white obelisk (1968), Spirit (1967) or Paganini (1981-1983).
But the German was not only surprised by the content of The old onesbut also discovering, through the x-ray he requested, that it had been done on a reused canvas that already contained another composition of a resurrection. “Using the same fabrics was normal at the time for reasons of savings, but Polke believed that there was something more, because before there was a resurrection and in the new painting he addresses how the lifespan of the two protagonists of the painting is running out.” , details the commissioner. Polke stopped at certain fragments of canvas that he photographed and then enlarged into photocopies that he altered by drawing on them, many of which are available in the show.
There are other pieces in the exhibition in which Polke worked directly on top of fabrics printed with Goya paintings, such as This is how to sit properly (1982), made from the engraving Caprice 26 (1799). He was also interested in the figure of Saturn in the painting to which the Aragonese returned so much – see Saturn devouring his son (1820-1823)—and which he interprets in his own way with Mephisto (1988). Also present is the more abstract and experimental Polke, which led him to earn the nickname The alchemist by using meteorite powder, snail slime, soot or silver nitrate. Lapis Lazuli II (1994) and Theories of catastrophes II (1983) are the best examples of this.
Sigmar Polke. Affinities revealed It is the second exhibition that El Prado dedicates to a contemporary artist, after Fernando Zóbel starred in an individual exhibition in 2022. The director of the institution, Miguel Falomir, clarified that the museum is not dedicated to the art of our time, but that “it cannot ignore contemporary artists in whom it was decisive for their artistic endeavors.”
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