Wolfgang Petrick (1939)

Wolfgang Petrick

Wolfgang Petrick is a German painter, graphic artist and sculptor who lives and works in Berlin and New York.

Petrick studied at the Higher School of Art in Berlin and founded the exhibition group Großgörschen 35 (Producing Gallery) in Berlin in 1964. The aim of this initiative was to give the younger generation the opportunity to create, exhibit and flourish. Petrick is considered a leader of the "critical realism" movement along with Peter Sorge, Hans Jürgen Diehl, Siegfried Neuenhausen and others. From 1975-2007 he was a professor at the Hochschule für Kunst in Berlin.

Over the years, Petrick moved from realistic painting and sculpture to an expressionist and crude aesthetic. Grotesque, caricature, and a mixture of photorealism and image manipulation appeared in his figures. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, photography entered his practice. The artist used a variety of techniques, from photography to installation, to achieve his critical goal.