pseudonym of Winckler Ralf
German, 20th – 21st century, male.
Born 5 October 1939, in Dresden, Germany.
Painter (including gouache), sculptor, engraver, performance artist, filmmaker, writer, musician.
New Fauves.
A. R. Penck produced his first paintings (landscapes and portraits) at the age of ten and subsequently studied commercial art in 1955. He was self-taught, practised different professions, and pursued many activities, such as music, poetry, and editing scientific, political, and aesthetic texts. He was a pupil of the painter Jürgen Böttcher-Strawalde and collaborated with him on joint works. He worked with a great many other artists from the West, such as Jörg Immendorf and Georg Baselitz, whom he met in 1961 in the former West Berlin. In 1980, he decided to live in the West, near Cologne; then he settled first in England and then in Ireland. In 1987, he became a teacher at the school of fine art in Düsseldorf. He recorded records with the painters Martin Kippenberger and Immendorf. During his career as an artist, he changed his identity several times: in 1969 to ‘Penck’, in 1973 to ‘Mike Hammer’, in 1974 to ‘TM’, and in 1976 to ‘Y’. He lives and works in Dublin....
