The important Neo-Expressionist painter, A.R. Penck, was born Ralf Winkler in Dresden, Germany, in 1939. As an adult, he was closely linked with other East-German exponents of the new figuration, including Jorg Immendorff and Georg Baselitz, all of whom were watched by the secret police and considered dissidents. In the late 1970s Penck's work was included in several shows in West Berlin, and he came to be seen as an important exponent of free speech in the East. Both the violence he witnessed in Dresden as a youth and the aggression and oppression of later twentieth-century politics have remained central themes in his work, which is known for its pictographic, Neo-Primitivist imagery of human figures and other totemic forms. This concise exhibition catalogue brings together works made from 1983 to 1989, so that key signature Standart figure paintings can be seen juxtaposed with some of the artist's less well-known work.