Early Life and the Genesis of Capitalist Realism Konrad Lüg, born in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1939 as Konrad Fischer, emerged from the post-war landscape of a nation grappling with reconstruction and a burgeoning consumer culture. His artistic trajectory was inextricably linked to this environment, a world rapidly shifting away from austerity towards an embrace of material goods and mass media. Lüg’s early studies at the Düsseldorf Academy, where he encountered kindred spirits in Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke under the tutelage of Bruno Goller and Karl-Otto Götz, proved pivotal. This shar…