Penck, AR

* October 5, 1939

biography

actually Ralf Winkler, German painter, graphic artist and sculptor. Penck was born in Dresden and trained himself in evening painting courses after being rejected by the art academies in East Berlin and Dresden. In 1980 he moved to Cologne. Since 1989 he has been a professor at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf. After initially experimenting with various media, such as film, music and texts, in 1963 Penck found symbolic stick figures, which he developed from graphic symbols such as hieroglyphs or runes. Since 1966 his pictures have been entitled Standart (from “Standard” and “Art”). At the beginning of the 1970s he turned to the neo-expressionist style in a freer style of painting. In the structural pictures he has created since 1974, he covers a white base with abstract black shapes and abbreviations. He also implements his symbolic vocabulary sculpturally, using found objects from 1971 to 1976 that he glued together with leukoplast. He has also been working with wood since 1977 and with marble and bronze since 1985/86. Together with other artists, he combines various art forms such as music, painting and poetry in actions.