A.R. PENCK. RETROSPECTIVE: Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany

Hardly any German artist did as much as A.R. Penck, né Ralf Winkler, to revive painting in Germany. Even while still in the German Democratic Republic, Penck repeatedly addressed the topic of the relationship between the individual and society. Since emigrating to the West in 1980 he has employed his unmistakable style to turn abstracted figures and pictorial signs into a universal vocabulary in which recollections of the beginnings of painting are fused with contemporary history and modern science to form a memorable visual world. The first large survey in Germany in twenty years presents Penck's work against the backdrop of changes in social and immanently artistic contexts and forms of reception. Approximately 130 large-format paintings, artist books, sculptures, and objects from 1961 to the present reveal the artist and his most important themes and groups of works.