COLOGNE.- On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Sigmar Polke‘s Athanor installation in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1986, the Anna Polke-Stiftung in Cologne is initiating an international, decentralized, and interdisciplinary research and education project.

Under the direction of Dr. Kathrin Barutzki (Anna Polke-Stiftung) and in cooperation with numerous project partners worldwide Sigmar Polke: Athanor NOW reactivates this now-iconic constellation of works—named after the alchemical furnace intended to yield the philosopher’s stone via transformations of matter—from current artistic and scholarly perspectives. The program running throughout 2026 focuses on topics such as ecology, alchemy, materiality, politics, and technology.

In offering a fresh perspective on the particularly productive phase during the 1980s, the project expands the artist’s reception as an alchemist. Artists and researchers from various disciplines will pick up on aspects of the historical constellation of Polke works and connect his engagement with diverse contexts and materials to current issues in practice and theory. Culture-historical approaches will thus be enriched by perspectives from literature and philosophy, the digital humanities, and the natural and technical sciences.

Athanor: The German Pavilion in Venice in 1986 as a starting point
The ensemble of works presented in Venice reveals the full Polke cosmos: Polizeischwein (Police Pig), created using the raster technique which Polke has been known for since the 1960s, greeted visitors on the exterior wall of the German Pavilion’s monumental Nazi-era building. Inside the historically charged exhibition space, visitors encountered new works created specifically for the site: in addition to six large-scale abstract paintings made with glossy synthetic sealant—the lacquer paintings which reflected the exhibition space with its visitors—the artist created an abstract mural in the apse of the pavilion with salt-based pigment that responded to the atmosphere of the Venetian lagoon, shifting from a delicate blue to a bright pink depending on the humidity. Polke extended this manifestation of the natural forces at play by positioning naturally occurring objects—a cinnabar stone, a quartz crystal, and a meteorite—within the space. Other paintings incorporated natural pigments and earth colors as well as synthetically produced materials, and resins, some of which were toxic. The abundance of materials clearly demonstrates Polke’s joy in experimenting with the widest variety of substances, supports, motifs, and objects.

With the image of the alchemists‘ furnace, Polke found a complex and flexible form that brought his painting together with the architecture of the pavilion and its immediate surroundings, and with natural and cultural-historical themes. He referred to current events—such as the handling of German (Nazi) history or the effects of the devastating explosion of the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, which occurred in April 1986 while Polke was preparing for Venice—and thus transformed the pavilion into a political blast furnace. These diverse references are expressed in the unconventional, reflective, and at the same time non-hierarchical approach to materials, colors, and media. Ever since the Athanor installation, which won him the Golden Lion, Polke came to be regarded as an alchemist.

Athanor NOW: New perspectives through interdisciplinary approaches worldwide
With a major solo exhibition at the De Pont Museum in Tilburg, an interdisciplinary summer school and numerous other formats worldwide—including guided tours and collection interventions, university courses and workshops, educational programs, podcasts and digital formats—the international year-long program reactivates works from the multilayered installation and related pieces within contemporary contexts.

Project partners include (among others): Albrecht-Dürer-Haus, Nuremberg; Cockburn Geological Museum, Edinburgh; De Pont Museum, Tilburg; Universiteit Gent; Grossmünster Zurich; ifa Stuttgart; KHM Cologne; Monash University, Melbourne; Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Rijksakademie Amsterdam; Ruhr Museum, Essen; San Diego Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; TU Berlin; Université de Lausanne; Universität zu Köln, Cologne; Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, and various others.