Sigmar Polke - 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 Olsztyn, Poland, 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, instilled within him a lifelong skepticism towards fixed ideologies and a fascination with the instabilit…