Sigmar Polke

Capitalist Realism was a term used by Polke, Gerhard Richter, and others in West Germany in the 1960s. Co-founded in 1963, it responded to consumer culture and mass imagery with irony rather than straightforward Pop celebration.

Polke used raster dots that mimic cheap newspaper or magazine printing. Unlike Roy Lichtenstein's clean Ben-Day dots, Polke's dots often look unstable, messy, or handmade, which undercuts the authority of mass images.

Polke and Richter were both German artists associated with Capitalist Realism in the early 1960s. They shared an interest in photography, consumer imagery, and postwar German visual culture, but Polke's work is usually more anarchic and experimental.

Polke painted on patterned fabric, used synthetic resins, and experimented with chemicals and unstable pigments. This material play became part of his critique of images, not just a decorative surface choice.