A.R. PENCK

From 12 February, the museum will be showing the first retrospective exhibition in Scandinavia featuring the German artist A.R. Penck.

Museum Jorn will be showing more than a hundred and fifty paintings, sculptures, drawings, and graphic works by one of the most significant German artists to emerge after World War II, Ralf Winkler (1939–2017) alias A. R. Penck.

The exhibition addresses a pictorial world where signs and symbols create visual narratives.

In his practice, Penck works with a vibrant symbolic language. His socio-critical graffiti-inspired ’cave paintings’ have inspired younger generations of artists across the world.

Penck was born and grew up in the former German Democratic Republic whose regime he criticised throughout the Cold War period, creating system pictures unshackled by ideology. For a number of years, he smuggled these pictures to the West to be able to show them.

The presentation of Penck at Museum Jorn juxtaposes a number of the artist’s major works from public and private collections, including large-scale bronzes and several monumental paintings.

In collaboration with Danish printmakers, Penck created a series of prints shown as a special part of the exhibition. Penck was a close friend of Per Kirkeby and, as an artist, shared Jorn’s fascination with symbols in art.

The A. R. Penck exhibition will be showing from 12 February until 15 May 2022.

The exhibition is under the patronage of the German ambassador to Denmark.

The exhibition is supported by
Augustinus Fonden
Birkelsche Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur