Un Sedicesimo 72

ATAK has recently taken to still lifes in which he always incorporates objects from his collection. They are pop-cultural vedutas that aim to evoke emotions from the object instead of claiming to be naturalist.

Georg Barber, born in the former GDR, has been using the pseudonym ATAK since the late 1980s, a punk period during which he graffitied the walls of East Berlin and trained as a letter painter. Today, as a prominent figure in contemporary comics, illustration teacher and author of remarkable children’s books, ATAK deploys a palette nourished by all his influences: in every drawing, in every publication, he unabashedly interweaves eras, genres and references, from art history to popular imagery. His dense painting is an unlikely synthesis of 19th-century German Romanticism and 1950s American comics. His work can be seen as a staging, in images and words, of the struggle between nature and humanity.