A.R. Penck: Paintings From The Sixties

A.R. Penck: Paintings From The Sixties at Michael Werner Gallery in New York. "...The works in this exhibition are modest in size and painted on fabric or board, simple materials that would have been available to the artist in East Germany at the time. A seemingly minimalist vocabulary of dots, lines and abstract forms is repeated throughout the works, which are painted with dispatch in a manner suggestive of the expressive mark-making that would later emerge in A.R. Penck’s painting. One recognizes the first traces of the iconography later found in the important 'Standart' works from the 1970s, a series for which the artist is best known. For all their apparent humility, these paintings are charged with vitality and an urgent sense of purpose, born of a need for communication over mere depiction. Their seemingly primitive iconography and style mask the deeply conceptual underpinnings of A.R. Penck’s work."