German artist Sigmar Polke, creator of 'Higher Beings Command,' dies at 69

13.06.10

Mr. Polke's artwork ranged from unmixed squiggles on paper to colossally flamboyant creations, dense with imagery and competing visual elements. He defied criterion artistic labels, passing from one visual fixed idea to another as he produced a large body of paintings, drawings, photography and three-dimensional installations.

In 1999, Art Tidings magazine called Mr. Polke (utter "Polka") one of the everyone's "ten most important living artists," and his drudgery was regularly exhibited in museums and malevolent-edge venues such as Italy's Venice Biennale. In 2007, one of his paintings from the 1960s sold for more than $5 million.

"Polke for a lengthy time has been the most interesting, least predictable of the painters around," critic and curator Robert Storr said in 2007.

Mr. Polke could be two a penny and serious at the same time. He often used unusual materials in his toil -- including toxic chemicals and perishable bread -- and delighted in thumbing his nose at artistic congregation. An underground sensation in the 1970s, when he traveled the set seeking exotic experiences through drugs and his ever-bounty camera, he found wider acceptance and commercial star in the 1980s. His freewheeling, anything-goes artistic phantasm became a primary inspiration for younger artists, including Americans Julian Schnabel and David Salle.

Source: Washington Post