CategoriesStyles and Movements
Capitalist Realism
Ironic German answer to Pop Art, launched in Düsseldorf in 1963 by the painters Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg.
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About
Gerhard Richter trained as a mural painter in Dresden under the rules of Socialist Realism before moving to West Germany in 1961. At the Düsseldorf academy he met Sigmar Polke and Konrad Lueg, and in 1963 they began using the label Capitalist Realism, a joke that mocked the official art of the East and the consumer boom of the West in one phrase. Its best-known outing was an event in a Düsseldorf furniture store, with Richter and Lueg on show among the sofas.
The paintings drew on newspapers, mail-order catalogues and snapshots. Richter copied black-and-white press and family photographs in soft, blurred greys. Polke painted the dot screens of cheap printing by hand, along with socks and plastic tubs. Lueg combined flat decorative patterns with simple figures. Look for everyday images made slightly strange. The joke soon ended, but Richter and Polke kept interrogating photographic images for decades.