A.R. PENCK (1939-2017)

Painted in 1994, and held in the same private collection since the following year, A. R. Penck’s 2 Bestimmte Formen in Beziehung (2 Certain forms in relationship) evinces a vibrant musicality. White oblong geometries swell against a bright yellow ground as two figures sway and swoon. The painting’s brushwork is thick, and its geometries simplified. Indeed, 2 Bestimmte Formen in Beziehung embodies Penck’s ‘Standart’, a term the artist coined to describe a painterly idiom which took inspiration from hieroglyphs and cave paintings. Defined by the rudimentary stickmen that Penck first developed in the 1960s, the system reimagined ancient visual systems as a means of communicating with the whole of humanity. ‘Every Standart can be imitated and reproduced and can thus become the property of every individual’, he explained. ‘What we have here is a true democratisation of art’ (A. R. Penck, quoted in O. Basciano, ‘A. R. Penck Obituary’, The Guardian, 5 May 2017).