POLKE, SIGMAR
1941 Oels/Lower Silesia–2010 Cologne

Title: Freundinnen II.
Date: 1967.
Technique: Color offset, hand-coloured on thin card.
Depiction Size: 46.5 x 59 cm.
Sheet Size: 48 x 61 cm.
Notation: Signed and dated bottom right: S. Polke 67.
Publisher: Galerie h (August Haseke), Hanover (publisher).
Frame: Framed.


This work is from an edition of of 25 copies.



'Freundinnen II' is one of Sigmar Polke’s earliest editions. Through his individual hand-colouring, he gives this copy a unique character, making it a one-of-a-kind piece.



We would like to thank Mr. Michael Trier of Cologne for his helpful information.



Provenance:
- - Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia


Literature:
- Becker, Jürgen/von der Osten, Claus: Sigmar Polke – Editioned Works 1963–2000, Catalogue Raisonné, Ostfildern-Ruit 2000, cat. rais. no. 4, ill.



- Freundinnen II is one of Polke’s most iconic motifs

- In this work, Polke combines his ability to elevate the everyday to art whilst simultaneously subjecting it to critical scrutiny

- A sought-after hand-coloured variant of this early edition

- Unique work



Overturning Old Conventions

Sigmar Polke was born in 1941 in Oels, Lower Silesia. Following the end of the Second World War, his family fled to Thuringia in 1945 before ultimately settling in Düsseldorf in 1953. From 1961 to 1967, Polke studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Karl Otto Götz and Gerhard Hoehme. During this period, he encountered artistic movements such as Dada and Fluxus, and together with Gerhard Richter and Konrad Fischer (formerly Konrad Lueg), he coined the term Capitalist Realism, conceived as a deliberate counter-position to the prevailing elitist art of the time.

This new generation of artists—also referred to as “German Pop”—adopted elements of American Pop Art while distancing itself from the glorification of consumer culture. Polke’s oeuvre is marked by skepticism, irony, and an anarchic attitude toward artistic conventions. From 1977 to 1990, he himself taught at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts. In 1986, he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale.



The Aesthetics of the Impersonal

The offset lithograph Freundinnen II (Girlfriends II) from 1967 belongs to the artist’s earliest editions and is considered one of his most iconic motifs. Published by Galerie h in Hanover, the work was produced in an edition of only 25 copies, each rendered unique through individual hand-coloring.

Polke based the composition on a newspaper advertisement, which he had previously incorporated into a 1965 painting and into the offset print Freundinnen I. He dramatically enlarged the source image and fragmented it through a grid of black and white dots reminiscent of newspaper printing—a technique that would become one of the defining characteristics of his oeuvre:

“I like the technical means, the cliché-like character of the raster. (…) What appeals to me is its impersonal, neutral, and manufactured quality. (…) Understood in this way, I believe that the raster I use already presents a very specific perspective, a general situation and interpretation: namely, the structure of my time, the structure of a social order, a culture standardized, divided, categorized, grouped, and specialized.”

— Sigmar Polke, quoted in Dieter Hülsmann, Kultur des Rasters. Ateliergespräch mit dem Maler Sigmar Polke, Rheinische Post, Düsseldorf, no. 108, May 10, 1966.

The image depicts two young women in swimwear presenting themselves to the viewer without interacting with one another. Their poses appear deliberately unnatural and exaggeratedly staged. The woman on the left stands sideways, her head turned toward the viewer, slightly set back, her upper body arched backward in a pose of proud display. She wears a long-sleeved shirt, polka-dot bikini bottoms, and a headscarf subsequently hand-colored in red.

The figure on the right steps closer into the foreground and thus becomes the focal point of the composition. Only her upper body is visible. Her left arm is bent casually, with the elbow leaning against a wall while her hand supports her head. She wears a polka-dot bikini top and a pillbox hat—a fashionable style of headwear in the 1960s, popularized by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Both garments of this figure are hand-colored in blue and green. The deliberate hand-coloring accentuates selected pictorial elements and disrupts the monochromatic raster structure.

Unlike Warhol’s portraits, for example, the work does not depict icons of popular culture; the identity of the women portrayed is ultimately irrelevant to Polke. Rather, the image communicates a zeitgeist conveyed through fashion and bodily pose—a spirit of the 1960s shaped by constructed notions of femininity and the emergence of a new leisure culture.

In elevating a trivial, mass-mediated image motif to the status of a work of art, Polke demonstrates his ability to transform the everyday into a multilayered image charged with critical reflection.

Sophie Ballermann



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