A Life Forged in Displacement: The Early Years and Artistic Formation of Sigmar Polke Sigmar Polke’s artistic journey was profoundly shaped by the tumultuous currents of 20th-century history, beginning with his birth in Oels (now Olesnica), a small town in German Silesia, in 1941. His early life was marked by displacement; as a child, he fled with his family first to Thuringia and then, seeking refuge from Communist rule, to West Germany in 1953. This experience of being uprooted, of existing between worlds – caught between the remnants of a shattered past and an uncertain future – instilled…