Athanor NOW – Buchhandlung Walther König

Sigmar Polke: Athanor NOW – Buchhandlung Walther König

Buchhandlung Walther König, photo: Alwin Lay

With this window display, the Anna Polke Foundation and the Buchhandlung Walther König are honoring a former loyal customer of the bookstore, Sigmar Polke.

A particular focal point is Polke’s Athanor installation in the German Pavilion at the 1986 Venice Biennale, for which he was awarded the Golden Lion. The window display brings together contemporary and antiquarian publications from the Anna Polke Foundation and the Buchhandlung Walther König with objects and ephemera; it also presents previously unpublished documents and photographs from the archives of the Foundation and private lenders. Publications by contemporary theorists and books that were part of Sigmar Polke’s personal library explore a diverse range of topics relating to art theory and practice, including color theory, alchemy, mineralogy, geoscience, and naturopathy, all connected to Polke’s Athanor cosmos.

The window display centers on the publications that were released in connection with the Athanor installation and the 1986 Venice Biennale; installation views, contemporary press coverage, and other documentary materials bear witness to this historic event.

Accompanying the catalog published in 1986—which can also be considered an artist’s book—are the works on paper that served as the basis for its cover, exhibited here for the first time.

Taking Athanor as well as its creation and reception as a starting point, the presentation features exhibition catalogues and publications on Polke from the second half of the 1980s, as well as later publications on relevant topics.

Window Display Exhibition Buchhandlung Walther König, photo: Alwin Lay

Documents, Objects, and Ephemera
(including some reproductions)

Sigmar Polke, Ohne Titel (für den Athanor-Katalog), 1986, three works on paper, ink on loose-leaf graph paper, private collection

Dierk Stemmler, floor plan for Sigmar Polke’s Athanor, German Pavilion, 1986 (drawn retrospectively), Archive of the Anna Polke Foundation

Exhibition poster, Sigmar Polke: Biennale Venedig 1986 / Städtisches Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, 1986/87, Archive of the Anna Polke Foundation

Exhibition poster, SIGMAR POLKE: Farbproben—Materialversuche—Probierbilder aus den Jahren 1973–86, 1986, Private Collection

XLII Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte—La Biennale di Venezia, leaflet, exhibition map, 1986, Archive of the Anna Polke Foundation

Postcards and letters from Sigmar Polke and Britta Zoellner to Anna Polke from Australia, 1980: the images on the postcards depict minerals from the National Museum of Victoria (crocoite, cerussite, gold crystals, stibnite), and sunset at Mt. Murchison

"Biennale Venedig 1986 / Er bekam den ersten Preis!! Den Löwen!", Note (“Venice Biennale 1986/He won first prize!! The lion!“) from Polke’s aunt Else Raschdorf, Archive of the Anna Polke Foundation

Music box, gift from Sigmar Polke to Anna Polke for her birthday on 22 June 1986, Archive of the Anna Polke Foundation

Photographs

Sigmar Polke with the Golden Lion, 1986, photo: Bice Curiger

Installation views of Sigmar Polke, Athanor, 1986, photos: Udo Dewies / Heinz Günter Mebusch / Ruth Kaiser, Archive of the Anna Polke Foundation

Sigmar Polke at the German Pavilion, 1986, photos: Dierk Stemmler, Archive of the Anna Polke Foundation

Opening of the German Pavilion, 1986, photos: Karin Polke, Archive of the Anna Polke Foundation

Sigmar Polke gives Anna Polke a music box on her birthday in front of the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 1986, photos: Karin Polke, Archive of the Anna Polke Foundation

Sigmar Polke’s Library

Sigmar Polke’s library consisted of thousands of books, lined up on meter-high steel shelves. It contained publications on art and everyday life, politics and history, other countries, cultures, and religions, Germany and its Nazi and colonial past, technology and science, architecture and art (history), nature and the cosmos, alchemy and color theory, and minerals and stones. Polke found these publications in bookstores (including the Buchhandlung Walther König), secondhand bookstores, or received them from friends. He collected old and new publications, multivolume encyclopedias and slim booklets, current magazines, newspaper articles, pop literature, comics, art books, exhibition catalogues, travel guides, fairy tales, and other children’s literature.
The small selection of books shown here provides an illustrative glimpse into some of the topics that interested Polke in relation to Athanor: alchemy and the transformation of materials and colors, precious materials such as gold, toxic substances found in nature, minerals, meteorites, and other stones. These subjects are further supplemented by books—both new and antiquarian—from the shelves of the Buchhandlung Walther König.

The following titles were also in Sigmar Polke’s library:

Julius Ruska, Leitfaden der Mineralogie. Eine Einführung in das Verständnis der Erscheinungen und die Kenntnis der Mineralien. Leipzig 1910.

Otto Lange, Mineral- und Pflanzengifte. Kosmos, Gesellschaft der Naturfreunde, Stuttgart 1929.

Emil Ernst Ploss, Heinz Roosen-Runge, Heinrich Schipperges, Herwig Buntz (eds.), Alchimia. Ideologie und Technologie. Munich 1970.

Walter Schumann, Steine und Mineralien. Munich/Vienna/Zurich 1972.

Eike Gierth, Rudolf Graubner, Hermann Harder, Lexikon für Mineralien- und Gesteinsfreunde. Stuttgart 1977.

Douglas Adams, Per Anhalter durch die Galaxis. Munich 1980.

Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, Alchemie. Die geheime Kunst. Munich 1982.

Niklaus Flueler, Sebastian Speich (eds.), Das Buch vom Gold. Zurich 1983.

Günther Harsch, Heinz Bussemas, Bilder, die sich selber malen. Der Chemiker Runge und seine „Musterbilder für Freunde des Schönen“. Cologne 1985.

Argyris Sfountouris, Kometen, Meteore, Meteoriten. Geschichte und Forschung. Heidelberg 1986.

David Goddard, Blei zu Gold. Das große Praxisbuch der geheimen Lehren für Kenner der magischen Künste. Munich 2001.

Items on loan from Dirk Weber. Feines Künstlermaterial, Bonn

Window Display Exhibition Buchhandlung Walther König,
Loans from *Dirk Weber. Feines Künstlermaterial* (Bonn), photo: Alwin Lay

The pigments, painting materials, and color tests shown here come from the inventory of Feines Künstlermaterial in Bonn. Dirk Weber supplied and advised Sigmar Polke since the early 1980s, searching all over the world for extraordinary materials—from rare mineral pigments such as lapis lazuli and cinnabar to innovative lacquer pigments, interference colors, and special image supports. The objects on display offer insights into the extraordinary collaboration between Dirk Weber and Sigmar Polke.
Sigmar Polke also used azurite, malachite, realgar, and orpiment to create his Farbtafeln (Color Panels) for the Athanorinstallation at the 1986 Venice Biennale. These mineral pigments played just as important a role as transparent lacquer, while the lacquer samples, Sandorin pigments, and GOLDEN’s interference paints exemplify the innovative materials researched by Weber specifically for Polke’s experiments, which opened up new painterly possibilities. The transparent Sandoz dyes, for example, could be completely dissolved in lacquer to product brilliant, light-resistant layers of color—a technical innovation that Polke made extensive use of in his Lackbilder (Lacquer Paintings) beginning in the late 1980s. From the early 1990s, Dirk Weber also supplied Polke with lapis lazuli pigment of exceptionally high quality that he produced himself, which became a staple material for the artist. The lapis lazuli stones, lapis lazuli pigment (grade S = Sigmar), test and watercolor swatches on display here illustrate the journey from the raw mineral to the finished pigment. The objects demonstrate how closely material research, technical expertise, and artistic innovation were intertwined in this decades-long collaboration.

As part of a scholarship from the Anna Polke Foundation (2025), Nico Joana Weber examined the productive (working) relationship between her father and Sigmar Polke.

Items on display (from left to right): Sandorin Brown RL, metal complex, dissolved in synthetic resin lacquer on L43U linen, Sandorin Yellow, Sandorin Brown RL dissolved in synthetic resin lacquer (100 ml), Jar containing Sandorin Brown dissolved in lacquer (100 ml), Cinnabar pigment, “chemically pure”, Postcard of the store at Kaiserstraße 16 in Bonn, Color test: Interference Blue, Tube of GOLDEN Interference Blue, Lapis lazuli, grade S (Sigmar), 2 lapis lazuli stones, Glass slide with lapis lazuli test swatches, Postcard: Lapis/our own production from no. 10 to absolue, Watercolor swatch of lapis lazuli, Lapis lazuli absolue, and behind it: malachite, realgar, azurite, orpiment

Items on loan from geologist Ulrike Stottrop

Window Display Exhibition Buchhandlung Walther König, Loans from Ulrike Stottrop, photo: Alwin Lay

In 1986, as part of her work at the Ruhr Museum in Essen, geologist Ulrike Stottrop entered into an intensive exchange with Sigmar Polke regarding his questions about geology and mineralogy. She guided Polke through the museum’s mineral collection, spoke with him about agates, radioactive stones, and pigments, and also agreed to loan the meteorite and the quartz crystal for the artist’s Athanor installation in Venice.
The books selected here from her private collection highlight some of the scientific questions and debates of the period. They reflect themes such as environmental destruction, forest dieback, population growth, and scenarios for the future, which significantly shaped the contemporary geological and ecological discourse and were therefore also relevant reference material for Polke. Furthermore, they showcase—as exemplified by the publications of Albert Renger-Patzsch—the beauty of natural forms and the cosmos, as well as micro- and macrostructures, while offering insights into popular science fiction, in which the future of the planet is reimagined based on the latest scientific findings.

Among the items on display from Ms. Stottrop’s collection are the following stones:
scholar’s rock, agate slice (formerly a quartz druse), quartz druse, flint, shell with fossil remains, sandstone (gray) with mica, lava stone, limestone with holes from boring bivalves, beach pebbles, a piece of a fossilized tree trunk, salt crystal (found during mining in the Ruhr region), desert rose crystal.

On two evenings, Ulrike Stottrop will share her memories of her encounters with Sigmar Polke with visitors to the Ruhr Museum’s exhibition depot at Zollverein in Essen and the Mineral Museum in Essen-Kupferdreh.

Books from Ms. Stottrop's collection:

Ernst Haeckel, Kristallseelen. Leipzig 1925.

F. Drevermann, Verständliche Wissenschaft: Meere der Uhrzeit. Berlin 1932.

Arthur C. Clarke, Die andere Seite des Himmels. Munich 1963.

Albert Renger-Patzsch, Gestein. Photographien typischer Beispiele von Gesteinen aus europäischen Ländern. Ingelheim/Rhein 1966.

Harry Wilk, Olaf Medenbach, Zauberwelt der Mineralien. Künzelsau 1977.

Christof Bosch, Die sterbenden Wälder. Fakten, Ursachen, Gegenmaßnahmen. Munich 1983.

Dieter Wieland, Peter M. Bode, Rüdiger Disko, Grün kaputt. Landschaft und Gärten der Deutschen. Munich (1983) 1987.

Timothy Ferris, Galaxien. Basel/Boston/Stuttgart 1983.

Georg Müller (ed.), Phänomena. Eine Dokumentation zur Ausstellung über Phänomene und Rätsel der Umwelt an der Seepromenade Zürichhorn. Zurich 1984.

Mircea Eliade, Die Religionen und das Heilige. Elemente der Religionsgeschichte. Frankfurt/Main 1986.

Jürgen Dahl, Hartmut Schickert (eds.), Die Erde weint. Frühe Warnungen vor der Verwüstung. Munich 1987.

Eugene P. Odum, Prinzipien der Ökologie. Lebensräume, Stoffkreisläufe, Wachstumsgrenzen. Heidelberg 1991.

Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur. Munich/New York 1998.

Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: Odyssee im Weltraum. Munich 2001.

Alexander von Humboldt, Kosmos: Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung. Die andere Bibliothek, ed. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, 2 vols. Frankfurt/Main 2004.

The window display was curated by Kathrin Barutzki and Sophia Stang (Anna Polke Foundation).

Sigmar Polke: Athanor NOW – Buchhandlung Walther König
Window Display Exhibition, 11–26 July 2026, Buchhandlung Walther König, Ehrenstraße 4, 50672 Cologne