B.1941 - Polke was born in Oels in Lower Silesia. He fled with his family to Thuringia in 1945 during the Expulsions of Germans after World War II. His family escaped from the Communist regime in East Germany in 1953, traveling first to West Berlin and then to Düsseldorf. Upon his arrival in West Germany, in Wittich, Polke began to spend time in galleries and museums and worked as an apprentice in a stained glass factory called Dusseldorf Kaiserswerth, before entering the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Art School) at age twenty. From 1961-1967 he studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Karl Otto Goetz and Gerhard Hoehme. There he made paintings that incorporated photographs on the canvas. In 1963 Polke founded “Kapitalistischen Realismus” (Capitalistic Realism), a painting movement with Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg (later called Konrad Fischer). It is an anti-style of art, appropriating the pictorial short-hand of advertising. This title also referred to the realist style of art known as ‘Socialist Realism’, then the official art doctrine of the Soviet Union (from which he had fled with his family), but it also commented upon the consumer-driven art ‘doctrine’ of western capitalism. He also participated in “Demonstrative Ausstellung”, a store-front exhibition in Düsseldorf with Kuttner, Lueg, and Richter. Upon graduation in 1968, Polke published a portfolio of fourteen photographs made with a borrowed camera depicting his tabletop sculptures and his performances. Over the next four years, he made thousands of photographs that were never printed and several films that were never edited, both for lack of money. Self-taught in photography, Polke experimented with chemical developers and fixers, incorporating mistakes and elements of chance into his finished work.