A.R. Penck was a German Neo-Expressionist whose paintings of figures and symbols nod to both German Expressionists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Art Brut. Penck's Standart works, which employ a lexicon of pictograph-like marks the artist referred to as "building blocks", are essential in understanding both his process and ideology. Though often associated with the graffiti-based work of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, his style emerged independently as a response to the censorship of the German Democratic Republic. Born Ralf Winkler on October 5, 1939 in Dresden, Germany, he adopted A.R. Penck as a moniker based on the early 20th-century paleogeologist Albrecht Penck when East German State Security began confiscating his works during...