Sigmar Polke Value: Top Prices Paid at Auction

The final sale on this list took place at Christie's London in October 2014, when this 2.8 by 3.5 metre work exceeded its estimate. The painting is particularly notable for its integration of multiple techniques that Polke had developed throughout his career. It combines his trademark raster dots with a pulled silkscreen technique developed from his experiments with photocopying errors. Painted on metallic fabric, the painting is a dramatic composite of styles and methods that Polke had appropriated and refined over decades of innovation. The artwork's imagery echoes its socially critical title, For The Third Rank, There Are Only Crumbs, featuring four headless figures in suits sweeping crumbs into baskets. These images are both funny and ominous, appearing like robots, endlessly working in a dark but colourful cosmos. The substantial appreciation in value - having previously sold for just £265,000 in 2003 - demonstrates the dramatic rise in Polke's market over a relatively short period.

Polke’s auction record was set in May 2015 by Dschungel (1967) at Sotheby’s New York, after selling in 2011 for £5.1 million - an increase of 300% in just four years. The piece exemplifies the artist's 1960s Rasterbilder (raster-dot paintings) that established his international reputation. The rasterbild style appropriates and subverts the commercial printing technique of the era; Polke meticulously hand-painted enlarged raster dots onto the canvas to form a tropical landscape. This laborious process simultaneously mimics and critiques mass media imagery, removing the mechanical element and adding very human imperfections. The work's exceptional market performance reflects both its art historical significance and distinguished provenance. Originally in the collection of Neue Heimat, Munich, it was later acquired by Galerie Fred Jahn before entering the prestigious Duerckheim Collection around 1980. When the Duerckheim Collection was auctioned at Sotheby's London in 2011, Dschungel (1967) was one of 34 German post-war artworks that sold for a combined $60.4 million, signalling the growing international recognition of German contemporary art.

Achieving £3.8M at Sotheby's New York in November 2021, Rasterbild Mit Palmen (1966) provides another excellent example of Polke's raster technique, this time using a combination of patterns rather than repeated dots. This dispersion painting features a landscape with palm trees rendered with a unique mix of precision and dreamlike blur. The painting shows Polke's sophisticated understanding of how mechanically reproduced images shape our perception of reality, and his ability to distort this perception through subtle changes. By recreating the raster process by hand, with all its imperfections and inconsistencies, Polke exposes the constructed nature of photographic “truth” while creating a uniquely painterly experience. The work's appearance at auction in 2021 was the first time it had become available to collectors since its sale to the Macklowe Collection at the Charles Saatchi Gallery, London, in 1988; its rarity contributed to its achieving 150% of its high estimate on the night.

Selling at Christie's New York in May 2017, Frau Mit Butterbrot (1964), or “Woman with Buttered Bread,” is one of Polke's earliest and most significant Rasterbilder. Created using household lacquer, casein, and oil paint, this large-scale work meticulously recreates a newspaper advertisement image through the artist's distinctive hand-painted raster-dot technique. Polke did this using a magnifying glass and a small stencil, carefully transferring each section of the original image individually. Unlike Roy Lichtenstein's regimented ben-day dots, Polke deliberately altered their placement, playing with size and configuration to create an effect that both defines and destabilises the central image. The subject of this piece - a fresh-faced model with a brilliant smile holding a piece of buttered bread to her open mouth - is the epitome of post-war domestic bliss. Its exceptional value, however, comes from its date. 1964 was the year of Polke's first Rasterbilder, beginning the artist’s scathing critique of mass media culture that embodied the radical Capitalist Realist approach Polke developed with fellow artists Gerhard Richter, Manfred Kuttner, and Konrad Lueg.

This vibrant Rasterbilder painting sold at Christie's London in October 2019 after being part of a private collection since 1971. It was created during the same pivotal period as the other works higher up this list, and showcases a similar technique of translating photographic imagery into hand-painted raster dots, but this time onto the subject of flowers, specifically Cyclamen, known for its heart-shaped leaves and reflexed petals. Ironically, Cyclamens are associated with love and empathy, despite being toxic to humans and animals. Despite spending the previous 50 years in a private collection, the piece has been displayed as part of the Sigmar Polke: Bilder - Tücher - Objekte - Werkauswahl exhibition in 1962-72 and 1976. This exhibition travelled from Tübingen to Düsseldorf, and then to Frankfurt in 1983.

Selling at Christie's New York in May 2021, Stadtbild II (1968) breaks away from Polke’s raster techniques, instead using more intuitive, fluid lines to capture areas of light emerging from shadow. It previously sold in 2011 for £4.1 million, out of the Duerckheim Collection; however, its small increase in value between 2011 and 2021 is likely related to broader market fluctuations. The work's strong price in 2021 reflects growing collector interest in works from this period, which bridge Polke's early Capitalist Realism approach with his later, more experimental techniques. The work’s theme centres upon Polke's critical perspective on modern urban environments and post-war German reconstruction - the buildings featured are all deliberately bright, modern, and tall.

Indianer Mit Adler (1975), or “Indian with Eagle,” sold at Christie's London in October 2014 for more than double its high estimate. This work represents Polke's experimental middle period when he moved beyond his earlier Rasterbilder to explore alternative materials and techniques. In particular, this piece uses fabric, spray enamel, glitter, and Lurex. In 1975, Polke was living in the Gaspelhof artists' commune near Düsseldorf. He had suspended his studio practice to travel extensively around South America, Southeast Asia, and the US, returning with a newfound interest in exotic materials and hallucinatory imagery. During this period, he experimented with LSD and other mind-altering substances, seeking to capture alternative visions in his art - an approach that would influence his work for decades to come. The auction result for this work reflects growing appreciation for Polke's middle period, which had previously been overshadowed by his early Rasterbilder in the market.

Another significant sale from 2014, Familie II (1966) sold in May at Christie’s New York. As one of two raster portraits on this list, the piece demonstrates the power of the technique to add commercial context to even intimate domestic images. Although the identities of the figures are obscured by the dots, their images are given a sense of greater historical importance by translating them into the language of mass media reproduction and newspaper reporting. In treating the image this way, Polke raises questions about the authenticity of both personal memories and public representations. The significance of Familie II (1966) within Polke's oeuvre is enhanced by its creation during a pivotal period when the artist was refining his approach to image-making and establishing himself as a leading figure in the European avant-garde.

Selling at Sotheby's New York in May 2022, the deceptively simple Plastik-Wannen (1964) represents Polke's foray into Pop Art. This oil painting depicts a range of everyday plastic containers, each with a unique purpose and shape, arranged in a grid formation that is led by the power of contrasting colours. Unlike his contemporaries, who often celebrated consumer culture, Polke's treatment of these mundane objects seems to more closely reference post-war German prosperity and material abundance. This difference proved key to the ongoing dialogue between European and American Pop Art. While American artists like Warhol and Lichtenstein embraced the iconography of consumer culture, Polke maintained a more ambivalent, even sceptical perspective - a position informed by his experience of moving from East to West Germany and witnessing the “economic miracle” firsthand. This critical dimension, combined with the work's technical sophistication, contributes to its strong market appeal.

This significant work from Polke's mature period sold at Sotheby's New York in May 2022. The Copyist (1982) is a prime example of Polke's experimentation with transparent and layered imagery to further explore the ideas of reproduction, authorship, and “copying,” that preoccupied his earlier Rasterbilder works. The work's title and central focus - a hunched figure sketching a landscape - directly engage with art historical traditions of replication, echoing Renaissance depictions of scribes like St. Paul while subverting the notion of originality through Polke's characteristically irreverent, cartoonish execution. By the early 1980s, Polke had moved beyond simple appropriation to develop a more nuanced engagement with art historical traditions and contemporary image culture. As such, The Copyist (1982) combines gestural abstraction with fragments of representational imagery in a richly layered visual experience that challenges straightforward interpretation.