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Lot 444
A.R. Penck ( -) STICK FIGURE signed and editioned 34/50 lithograph printed in colours 250 by 130cm SYMBOLS AND NEO-EXPRESSIONISM IN POST-WAR GERMANY Since A.R. Penck’s death in 2017 there has been considerable interest in his artwork. Posthumous solo exhibitions have showcased his bold, restless work, filled with his own self-created symbols. These include A.R. Penck: Paintings from the 1980s and Memorial to an Unknown East German Soldier, both held at the Michael Werner Gallery in New York in 2018, as well as the acclaimed I think in Pictures, a show of Penck’s featured works from the 1970s and 1980s held at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology at Oxford University in 2019. Penck was born Ralf Winkler in Dresden in 1939. He adopted his chosen pseudonym after the paleogeologist Albrecht Penck out of necessity when the East German State Security began to confiscate his works in the 1960s. His art was deemed not to conform to the ideology of the state. In 1969 the Michel Werner Gallery hosted Penck's first solo show, signalling the beginning of a relationship that would be fortuitous and supportive throughout the artist’s career. Exhibiting in New York was only possible because the artist had changed his name, confusing border officials and allowing his work to pass through the Berlin wall. Michel Werner himself smuggled some of Penck’s artworks out of East Berlin, and arranged for friends in the city to deliver art materials to Penck in order for him to continue his practice.Penck’s Standart works are characterised by a myriad of pictographic marks that the artist viewed as the ‘building blocks’ he used to communicate his ideology, leaving clues and riddles for the viewers of his paintings in this lexicon of coded language. The artist began to explore how symbols, signs and numbers could be abstracted, creating a common language which could express the sadness and loss of post-World War II Germany in the Cold War era. An example is the letters ‘A’ and ‘B’ it is understood that he is referencing the capitalist West Germany and communist East Germany. Due to this aesthetic, Penck is often associated with artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, although it is more likely that the artist’s style emerged spontaneously. He had little access to the work of his Western contemporaries whilst living in East Germany (German Democratic Republic) which heavily censored any influence that threatened the state. There has been a resurgence of interest in A.R. Penck’s work in recent years, at a time when contemporary artists are exploring the tenuous relationship of abstraction and figuration, and personal and recognisable iconographies and symbols. This has resulted in his work gaining momentum on the secondary market.His stick figure was Penck's most common motif and is given precedence in the lithograph Stick Figure, which is part of the artist’s well known Standart works, which he produced over a number of decades. The works in this series evoke graffiti art, cave paintings and Asian calligraphy. Here the colourful stick figure takes centre stage in the composition. The character could not be more typical of Penck’s chosen subjects. In the 1980s, when his career began to take off. Penck began exhibiting widely in London and New York and participated in the 1984 Venice Biennale as well as four editions of Documenta.
Lot 799
A scarce Lang’s patent 46 bore percussion walking stick gun/rifle, 36½” overall, screw off barrel 23”, pulling back on the “butt” exposes the action and permits the trigger to spring out, the action being cocked with a special tool (now missing), engraved “Patent J Lang, 7 Haymarket, London, No 138” and hinging down behind the action to form a shoulder stock; with interchangeable 40 bore rifle barrel with folding leaf rearsight, the whole painted to imitate bamboo. GC (the paint extensively chipped, the rifle barrel lacking a nipple). Plate 10
Lot 746
A post 1958 .177” Webley Junior air pistol, batch number 377, with “Birmingham 4” address. GWO & C, much original finish on the left side (large areas of water staining on right); also a Mark II Webley Junior air pistol, batch number 677. WO & GC (stick on label missing, minor bruising to finish). (2)
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