At the exhibition of postwar German art at Prague City Gallery's Municipal Library space, Immendorff's contributions are certainly among the best works (if not the most humorous) in a show that includes acclaimed German artists such as Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter. Immendorff is represented there by a selection of eight sculptures of humanized monkeys along with a couple of paintings.

Immendorff's show at Galerie Jiří Švestka features bronze sculptures of monkeys in various anthropomorphic roles and poses. There is Michael the artist, holding a palette and a couple of paintbrushes. Otto holds out two eyes like a set of binoculars, and Jörg glides like a ballet dancer in motion, with a small bird on his fingertips. Georgie and Otto are a pair: the larger on all fours, and the smaller one sitting on his back with a kind of torch in his hands. Hans stands in a modest pose, holding a wineglass behind his back, and Blinky props a horse's head on his shoulders. Baldung is on crutches and standing on two spheres strapped to his feet.

The paintings rely on the heavy use of stenciled motifs from classical masters, juxtaposed with modern imagery and textures. The point isn't simply to copy imagery from art history, but to (re)introduce important themes and decode them for a contemporary audience. For instance, in Nest (2004), there is a stencil of a classical drawing of a heavyset nude woman riding atop a long-bearded, naked old man on all fours with a leash across his teeth, the other end of the leash firmly in her grip. Behind them is a gold background and a black cloud or blob rising from beneath.

What is the point of this image, transported from centuries past to Immendorff's work? Perhaps it refers to the scandals that swirled around the artist in 2003, when he was caught among seven prostitutes and in possession of cocaine. This prompted his suspension from his position as professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, though he was later reinstated.

In 1998, Immendorff (born in 1945) was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disorder. Since that time, he has not been able to paint as before. At first he could not paint with his dominant left hand, and switched to his right. Now he is confined to a wheelchair and cannot paint at all. Most of his later work has been completed by a team of painters and sculptors following his instructions.

This is a sadly ironic conclusion to Immendorff's career as an artist, since he first gained attention as an art student of Joseph Beuys in 1966 by painting the words "Stop Painting" (in German) onto a bed and placing Beuys' hat onto the bedpost, openly declaring inspiration by his mentor.

What do sculptures of monkeys acting like humans have to do with all of this? In the last room of the "Malerstamm" exhibition is a sublime painting by František Kupka titled Antropoides—Fight for a Woman (1902) alongside Immendorff's work. Kupka's painting shows two male apes fighting furiously on a rocky beach as a female ape looks on, entertained and clutching a bunch of red flowers.

According to the exhibition catalog, the inspiration for "Malerstamm" stems from several sources, including Virgil's poetry, a famous caricature by Titian portraying the classical Laocoön sculpture as a group of monkeys and an academic debate from the late 16th century. But with or without these arcane references, Immendorff has found a way to (re)contextualize images and themes from classical art — and classical modernism, if you allow Kupka into the picture — for present-day audiences.