The time of origin is crucial for Ralf Winkler, who in 1967 chooses the pseudonym A. R. Penck, under which he achieved worldwide over the following decades. Penck lived in the GDR, where the repressions of the system determined his art. He was interested in scientific discourses and the search for new pictorial forms. He saw images as a means of communication that can be understood by everyone but should not be one-dimensionally decipherable. In the early years, he described his art as "Standart" and developed a complex concept that aims to explore new pictorial forms. In a kind of painterly diagram, he assembled signs, symbols, letters, but also early forms of his stick figures and the eagle in what appears to be a mathematical sequence in these early picture. The letter T appears twice, suggesting the formulation of a theory, but ultimately no clear message emerges. Does the artist provide us with secret codes to put the unspeakable into pictorial formulation? A lot had to remain hidden back then. Penck quickly became a legend in the West, too, when Michael Werner showed the so-called Standart pictures at Galerie Hake in Cologne for the first time in 1968. The true identity of the artist, however, is officially kept secret. Works from these years still form the basis of his entire artistic work today. [SN]