Sigmar Polke am Gaspelshof

Sigmar Polke’s home and place of work, the Gaspelshof in Willich near Düsseldorf, was a meeting place for social and artistic activities, merging art and everyday life in the 1970s. Many well-known works and exhibitions were created here, such as Original + Fälschung. Using new sources and reports from contemporary witnesses, Lucy Degens traces the way that ideas, images and cameras circulated at the Gaspelshof, leading to the production of art in collaboration. She shows that the network Polke brought together there did not reflect the classic categories of artist group or individual, and was thus a challenge to the contemporary art world. She creates a complex picture of Polke’s work at the Gaspelshof among a circle of fellow artists including Achim Duchow, Katharina Steffen and Astrid Heibach.

• New insights into Polke’s work during the 1970s
• First detailed approach to the idea of plural authorship in the context of Polke’s work