Un Sedicesimo 72

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.

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.