Sigmar Polke (born February 13, 1941) is a German painter and photographer.
Polke was born in Oelsnitz in Lower Silesia. He fled with his family to Thuringia in 1945 during the Expulsion of Germans after World War II. His family escaped from the Communist regime in East Germany in 1953, traveling first to West Berlin and then to Düsseldorf.
Upon his arrival in West Germany, in Wittich, Polke began to spend time in galleries and museums and worked...
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Sigmar Polke (born February 13, 1941) is a German painter and photographer.
Polke was born in Oelsnitz in Lower Silesia. He fled with his family to Thuringia in 1945 during the Expulsion of Germans after World War II. His family escaped from the Communist regime in East Germany in 1953, traveling first to West Berlin and then to Düsseldorf.
Upon his arrival in West Germany, in Wittich, Polke began to spend time in galleries and museums and worked as an apprentice in a stained glass factory called Dusseldorf Kaiserswerth, before entering the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Art School) at age twenty. From 1961-1967 he studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Karl Otto Goetz and Gerhard Hoehme and began his creative output during a time of enormous social, cultural, and artistic changes in Germany and elsewhere. During the 1960s,Düsseldorf, in particular, was a prosperous, commercial city and an important centre of artistic activity.
In 1963 Polke founded “Kapitalistischen Realismus” ...
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![Untitled [double-sided painting]](http://img.freebase.com/api/trans/image_thumb/en/untitled_double_sided_painting?pad=1&errorid=%2Ffreebase%2Fno_image_png&maxheight=80&mode=fillcropmid&maxwidth=80)
