In Mendrisio a major exhibition on A.R. Penck, among Germany's leading postwar artists

Until February 13, 2022, the Mendrisio Museum of Art is hosting a major exhibition dedicated to A.R. Penck (Ralf Winkler; Dresden, 1939 - Zurich, 2017), one of the most important German artists of the second half of the twentieth century, the one who, together with other painters and fellow artists (Baselitz, Lüpertz, Polke, Richter, Immendorff and Kiefer) was able to express the contradictions of post-Nazi Germany and the East-West conflict through a highly original language albeit conceived in traditional forms of expression, such as painting, drawing and sculpture. The Mendrisio retrospective, titled simply A.R. Penck, curated by Simone Soldini, Ulf Jensen, and Barbara Paltenghi Malacrida, and including more than 40 large-format paintings, 20 sculptures in bronze, cardboard, and felt, and more than seventy works on paper and artist’s books) intends to retrace the main stages of one of the most significant exponents of international art of the 1970s and 1980s. Retrospectives over the past two decades (Frankfurt, Paris, Dresden, St. Paul-de-Vence, Oxford and The Hague) have provided a broad overview of Penckian’s most important production. With this project, the Mendrisio Museum of Art aims to present the creative journey of A.R. Penck (for the first time in the Italian-speaking cultural sphere) through his multifaceted expressions, trying to provide the public with the tools to be able to understand the complex and profound structure of this great protagonist of contemporary art.

Born in Dresden (his real name was Ralf Winkler), A.R. Penck for decades was active in East Germany with works of clear socialist inspiration, managing to capitalize on conditions then openly hostile to avant-garde art: while socialism denied the modern artist any function, Penck was able to transform over time the function of his own painting into an element in dialogue with the social and political system. Until the late 1970s, however, he rarely exhibited in the then GDR. It was not until the early 1970s that Penck was able to participate in exhibitions; not in his homeland, but in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Canada, receiving wide acclaim. In 1972 he exhibited at documenta 5 in Kassel called by Harald Szeemann; in the early 1980s he was among the protagonists of the exhibitions, fundamental to modern painting, A New Spirit in painting (London) and Zeitgeist (Berlin). A paradox of divided Germany is precisely the fact that his work, so strongly linked to the analysis of the socio-political situation, is recognized and appreciated only in the West, and never in his homeland.

Then, in 1980, when, after yet another clash with the authorities, the artist emigrated to the West: A.R. Penck is now considered one of the leading figures on the world painting scene and has already attracted great interest even in New York. Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring admire him for his vigorous monumental painting, capable of delineating the complexity of the world with the spontaneity and immediacy of a graffiti artist. In 1984 he was celebrated with a solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale; in 1988 the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin consecrated him definitively with a major retrospective. The foundations of his monumental painting date back to the late 1960s, with the birth of the Standart project (still unexplored in all its complexity). As a kind of monumental avatar, Standart symbolizes the artist’s self-consciousness, the one with which A.R. Penck pursues his solitary project, in line with Bauhaus ideas: the transformation of modern society according to aesthetic criteria. It is precisely the Standart figure, with which the entire figurative universe of A.R. Penck, which is the starting point of the exhibition organized by the Mendrisio Museum of Art, where a large number of his masterpieces will be on view. In addition to presenting large-format paintings, the Mendrisio exhibition highlights for the first time through many artist’s books (displayed on special projectors) the structural coherence of Penck’s work, from sketch to monumental work: a mimesis of nature. His scientific training (from philosophy to cybernetics) led him to orient himself to the evolutionary model by searching for new forms, new signs, new figurative types.

During the 1970s, A.R. Penck draws on the legacy of the historical avant-garde, from Malevič to Kandinsky, Picasso to Duchamp, Picabia to Dalí. While in the West modern painting is now regarded as a historically concluded experience, Penck continues to perceive it as the result of collective action, triggering a bursting evolution of the image that, after his move to West Germany, is transformed into monumental synthesis. Thanks to his celebrated stylized figure, the one that brought him international fame (often perceived solely as a stylistic figure, not as an element of an elaborate communication system) A.R. Penck instead reveals himself to be the artist who, more and better than others, was able to transform the figurative field into a megaphone through which to spread his theoretical and aesthetic convictions. His monumental painting relates both to the historical genre, a mirror of contemporary events, and to symbolic painting, to which he gives voice through an entire bestiary of totemic figures or archaic animals. The highlight of the last phase of his work, however, is a third genre, the Weltbild, the universal image. Until his maturity production, A.R. Penck pursues the idea of a visionary image capable of representing in a single perspective the choral nature of the world. And he does so by favoring the medium of painting, ideal for narrating the epos of human history in various formats. Penck also figures among the protagonists of sculpture in the last three decades: he has been involved in sculpture since his youth, and his first plastic group consists of models made from poor materials as part of the Standart project; in the mid-1970s he made wooden sculptures with an axe. Beginning in 1984 he concentrated on the bronze casting technique, working on different formats until he reached the monumental dimension, with a path similar to that already followed in painting.

“Penck’s art is analytical,” writes Simone Soldini, "not at all primitivist, instinctive, wild or childish; its foundations rest on rationality. Each of his images is constructed to represent a concept, and in a few years his images-information, or images-concept, are refined to the highest degree. In the late 1960s, Standart takes theoretical form. But what is Standart? Let us try to summarize it by taking from the writings-manifestos or artist’s explanations. The term combines two words, Stand and Art, but probably also refers to ’banner,’ that is, the military ensign. This is how his writing-manifesto opens: ’Standart refers to a method of making information products [...]. In general, every visual existential phenomenon, once it has been perceived in its totality, is a standart.’ A situation experienced and brought back into painting through a theory of signs and symbols. Recreating it involves a (trained) capacity for overall perception, for memorization and data storage, for analysis and reconstruction: ’making visible the logic of human interactions.’ But not only that. Standart is a system of signals made in such a way that it is not only perceived and imitated, but also produced, multiplied and operationally modified’. Which makes it a system within everyone’s reach. Standart’s emblematic symbol is a figure of man reduced to his essence (head and sex well highlighted) that is a little bit reminiscent of the primitive and a little bit of the automaton of the future, but is ultimately timeless presence. In his writing-manifesto Penck also specifies that his Standart is an evolving model, as, for example, has happened to every genre of music.

“A.R. Penck,” Ulf Jensen points out, “had a gift for drawing out of oppressive conditions a greater capacity for production, and he takes seriously the warning given to him by the voice of the people. He decided to adhere to the so-called Bitterfeld Way, a programmatic guideline addressed to artists that, adopted in 1959, foregrounds the need to give voice and representation to workers’ lives. The artist’s primary duty is to adopt a language close to the people. In all exhibitions devoted to German art, held regularly in Dresden beginning in 1946, typical subjects of socialist realism are displayed side by side. Tractors, machinists and engineers are depicted in their everyday reality, appearing almost indistinguishable from one another. Here A.R. Penck achieves a decisive understanding of the mechanism of modern art: ’He who does not stand out, is identical.’”

For information you can visit the Mendrisio Art Museum website.

In Mendrisio a major exhibition on A.R. Penck, among Germany's leading postwar artists

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