Sigmar Polke

Known for: Capitalist Realism; the Rasterbilder paintings

Sigmar Polke co-founded Capitalist Realism with Gerhard Richter in the early 1960s, developing a satirical response to both American Pop Art and German consumer culture. His paintings combined advertising imagery, cartoon motifs, and hand-painted patterns — the Rasterbilder made by painting over halftone dot patterns — in a deliberately unstable, ironic style. He used unconventional and unstable materials including silver nitrate, arsenic, and meteorite dust that have caused many of his works to change over time.