Editions of Sigmar Polke has devoted the Museum Ludwig in 2009 an exhibition. This comes following enrollment of his graphic work:
"Sigmar Polke's editions are not something the artist "does on the side". They highlight the reproductive techniques which his paintings also return to time after time: printing, complete with raster dots, photographs and Xeroxes. The editions literally render what the paintings simply translate. But they also translate what the artist himself has painted, or anticipate it. The editions are an important element in Polke's enquiry into the representation and duplication of the world.
Our exhibition covers the entire history of the editions, right back to over forty years ago. Rare prints and reworkings are as much a part of this as the inserts he put into newspapers in runs of many thousands. Since 1963 and above all after 1967, Polke has produced numbered editions. Back then was the heyday of prints and graphic art, but Polke adopted a highly unusual technique: offset printing. Offset printing, which has only ever interested a handful of artists, is also the medium in which many of Polke's images first originated. Because offset is the medium of the yellow press, whose illustrations Polke has used for his own purposes. So printing the editions took the artist's preoccupation with mass communications back to its very origins." (Museum Ludwig, Cologne)
