A.R. Penk : Skizze

A R Penck - Sketch (Skizze), 1983
acrylic on canvas

It is one of the works that impressed me the most at the Paint Made Flesh exhibition from Phillips. I thought immediately at The Seer of Gottlieb (viewed also at Phillips, some time ago): a imilar pictorial alphabet of Primitive ideograms, the same bi-dimensional space, in quest for the purity of the Primitive Art.

A. R. Penk could be revendicated by two contemporary art directions: Neo-Primitivism and Neo-Expressionism. If you agree, his Neo-Primitivist approach is a way of expressing his Neo-Expressionsit feelings: witnessing as a child the bombardment of Dresden, leaving then in East Germany under the constant pressures of the Communist regime, surveyed by the political police, he expressed by his art (painting, sculpture, along with jazz) his dissident attitude. And Expressionism is a propper way to speak about your disdain for the ugly realities of the universe you are constrained to live.

(Paint Made Flesh)