This playfully provocative painting typifies Sigmar Polke’s exploratory and genre-bending work from the 1970s, a period in which the artist was experimenting with new styles and media. The couple in Untitled appear deeply involved and yet the female gazes to the side in a conspiratorial manner, turning her body slightly away from her companion. This establishes a visual connection with the viewer and implicates them in the knowledge of her erotic activity, also lending a potentially performative aspect to the scene.

Polke’s careful figuration and use of sparse clean lines forms a contrast with the blurred stretches of coloured ink which spread across the paper. This interest in multi-layered compositions and translucency can be traced back to the artist’s early training in glass painting, and here serves to create a number of filters through which the work can be perceived and understood. His continual innovations cemented his position as a leading artistic figure in the 1960s, studying under Joseph Beuys and exhibiting alongside Richter, with whom he developed the theory of capital realism. Polke intentionally circumvents conventions and flaunts formal pictorial rules, thus creating a subtle sense of satire through the confluence of his subject matter and chosen techniques.