One of the main exponents of Capitalist Realism - a current that arose in the 1970s in opposition to both the Socialist Realism widespread in the countries of Eastern Europe and Western pop art - Sigmar Polke was a tireless experimenter of techniques, art materials, and chemical-alchemical processes. He created figurative paintings that drew on a vast iconographic repertoire often inspired by everyday life and abstract works with a powerful symbolic value sometimes created by chance through reactions between paint and other products. The book reproduces over eighty-five of his works (including photographs and sculptures, along with numerous paintings), giving a full account of Polke's reflections and studies made over his fifty-year career.