The sculptures are often reminiscent of the stone heads of Easter Island and other Oceanic art.
In memory of Penck, the painter and sculptor Ralf Winkler adopted the nom de plume A. R. Penck in 1966.
Black and white portraits and colour prints were made of Joseph Beuys, James Lee Byars, Ford Beckmann, Fernando Botero, Herman de Vries, Felix Droese, Erró, Keith Haring, Dennis Hopper, Jörg Immendorff, Martin Kippenberger, Meret Oppenheim, A.R. Penck, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Yannis Tsarouchis and Wolf Vostell.
He left "a remarkable body of work whose profound modernity has only recently come to light":The interest shown in his work by such important figures as Roberto Matta (1911-2002), and the impact it would have on the art of Arnulf Rainer (1929), Julian Schnabel (1951), A.R. Penck (1939) and Elmar Trenkwalder (1959), confirm him as an artist of the twentieth century whose work has its place in reflections by contemporary artists.
As well as artists of his own generation - Dirk Bell, Tacita Dean, Thomas Demand, Mathew Hale, Manfred Pernice, Andreas Slominski and Peter Stauss – he also selected those of an older generation born in East Germany - Carl Friedrich Claus, Hermann Glöckner, Manfred Kuttner, A.R. Penck and Eugene Schönebeck.
Chidi was selected in 1993 to study in the class of late Prof. Michael Buthe and Prof. A.R. Penck.