Author(s): Eine Winterreise

Art and Photography

Published on the occasion of Sigmar Polke: Eine Winterreise, curated by Vicente Todoli for David Zwirner, New York, in 2016, this volume brings together a rich body of work, ranging from Polke's mass - produced tourist scenery of the 1960s to the complex and multilayered paintings he made during the 1980s. During his travels, Polke had a breakthrough in his thinking about color noting, "how, for ex ample, Hinduism explains and uses color or how Australians use color." Katharina Schmidt, a Polke expert and longtime friend of the artist, whose essay for this catalogue reconstructs the specifics of Polke's itinerary, further explores the direct relation ship between his experiences and his subsequent expanded exploration of color in the later 1980s. In a new piece of scholarship, J. Hoberman looks at films Polke produced during his travels - often unedited and ethnographic - which work like sketchbooks, as th e artist captured footage that sets him within the history of experimental film.