Beschreibung:

10 Property from an Important European Collection Sigmar Polke Follow Ohne Titel (Porträtist) signed and dated 'S. Polke 79' lower right gouache, spray paint and pencil on paper 69.9 x 99.5 cm (27 1/2 x 39 1/8 in.) Executed in 1979.
Provenance Galerie Hajo Müller, Cologne Private Collection, Europe (acquired from the above in 1987) Sotheby's, London, 10 February 2015, lot 40 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited London, Tate Gallery; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; Deichtorhallen Hamburg, The Froehlich Foundation. German and American Art from Beuys and Warhol, 1996 - 97, no. 225, p. 117 (illustrated) Liverpool, Tate Gallery, Contemporary German and American Art from the Froehlich Collection, 5 June - 20 August 1999 Karlsruhe, Museum für Neue Kunst, Sigmar Polke Werke aus der Sammlung Froehlich, 17 September 2000 - 11 February 2001, pp. 102-103, no. 64 (illustrated) Baden-Baden, Museum Frieder Burda; Vienna, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Wien, Polke: eine Retrospektive, 3 February - 13 May 2007, no. 146, pp. 200-201 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay With its kaleidoscopic composition filled with images seemingly taken from comic strips, shown against a vigorously-painted backdrop, Ohne Titel (Porträtist) plunges the viewer into the provocative universe of Sigmar Polke This work on paper was created in 1979 and comprises a number of narrative layers upon a painterly backdrop. It is a tribute to its importance that Ohne Titel (Porträtist ) was shown in a number of exhibitions, not least in Polke’s own lifetime. In 2004, Ohne Titel (Porträtist) was on loan to the Museum für Neue Kunst im ZKM, Karlsruhe. Both stylistically and thematically, Ohne Titel (Porträtist) resembles an earlier series of ten large works on paper entitled We Petty Bourgeois! that were created between 1974 and 1976, and which were exhibited to acclaim in the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 2009. Polke created Ohne Titel (Porträtist) at an important juncture in his life and career. During the 1970s, when he had created We Petty Bourgeois! , he had largely been based at a farm called Gaspelshof, in Willich in the Lower Rhine. From there, he sallied forth, either on wide-ranging international travel to places as far-flung as Afghanistan and Papua New Guinea, or to Hamburg, where in 1977 he was made a professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst. In 1978, the year before he made Ohne Titel (Porträtist) , Polke moved to Cologne, but the legacy of those earlier years was crucial. For during his time at Gaspelshof, he had lived in a near-commune atmosphere, alongside a number of other friends, family members and artists. Both on his travels and at home, he had experimented widely with drugs, not least hallucinogens such as LSD and magic mushrooms. All this had an impact on the anarchic logic that fuelled his collage-like pictures from the period, not least Ohne Titel (Porträtist) . Perhaps reflecting both his use of hallucinogens and also his experimentations with double exposure in photography, while also taking up the DADA mantle of collage, Ohne Titel (Porträtist) presents the viewer with a disconcerting palimpsest of imagery. Narrative is superimposed upon narrative: firstly, and almost least perceptibly, the red face of the woman is shown staring out of the picture, her chin leaning on her hand. Next are the black, print-like images of a woman with scissors, looking aghast, on the right; on the left, a scantily-dressed woman, perhaps the same, is shown holding scissors next to another sleeping female figure. Meanwhile, the largest and most dominant imagery is in blue: a male artist, shown from behind, painting a portrait that appears to have nothing to do with its sitter, a concerned-looking woman. Is she a victim describing her assailant to a police artist? With the pot of brushes and other accoutrements by his side, the viewer suspects that this is more of a painter than a police artist. Meanwhile, the image emerging on his sheet of paper looks as though it may be a man, and indeed perhaps even be a self-portrait. Meanwhile, a mysterious, spectral figure painted largely with vigorous blue brushstrokes rather than the precise, print-like illustration of the rest of the scene,