8 ready-made designs
Trash Polka tattoo flash
Trash Polka was created in 1998 by Volker Merschky and Simone Pfaff at the Buena Vista Tattoo Club in Würzburg, Germany, and originally called Realistic Trash Polka — realism for the imagery, trash for the graphic lettering and torn edges, polka for the way it all plays together. Photographic realism is collaged against brush smears, slashes, splatter and blocks of type, almost always in black and red alone. It looks chaotic and is heavily composed. The name is a registered trademark, though the style is now practised worldwide.
What to know about trash polka work
- Red is the whole identity, and red is also the ink most likely to fade and the most common to react to. Ask your artist about their red and patch test if you have reacted to pigment before.
- The two-colour limit is the style. Black and red carry the whole composition, and adding a third colour turns it into something else — if you want a fuller palette, neo-traditional will serve you better.
- It needs scale and a specialist. Collage compositions depend on large graphic gestures, and few artists do this style properly, so look for someone with real Trash Polka work in their portfolio rather than one example.
Where it sits best
Upper arms, thighs, backs and chests. The style is built on bold sweeping marks crossing the whole composition, so it needs a large uninterrupted area to land.