Martin Kippenberger
1953–1997 · German painter, sculptor and multidisciplinary artist, a central figure among the enfants terribles of the 1980s
Martin Kippenberger (Dortmund, 1953 - Vienna, 1997) was a German artist who worked as a painter, draftsman, photographer, sculptor, and installation and performance artist. His prolific output across many styles and media, together with his provocative and convivial public persona, made him the centre of a generation of young German artists known as the enfants terribles, among them Albert and Markus Oehlen, Georg Herold, Dieter Göls and Günther Förg. His connection to the German Neue Wilde movement and his presence at the Venice Biennale and documenta 1997 place him among the most influential German artists of his time.
He studied at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts, where Sigmar Polke, though never his direct teacher, had a formative influence on him. After a stay in Florence, where he had his first solo show in 1977, he settled in Berlin in 1978. There he founded Kippenberger's Office with Gisela Capitain, a space for showing his own work and that of his friends. In the early 1980s he became part of the Cologne art scene, where he paid as much attention to how art was presented as to the works themselves. In 1984 he was a founding member of the artists' association Lord Jim Lodge.
His output was remarkably varied. In the 1980s he alternated politically charged projects, such as the gas station he bought in Salvador de Bahia and renamed after Martin Bormann, with series of paintings and sculptures. His work on Pablo Picasso, partly produced in Spain in 1988, and the Latex or Rubber paintings begun in New York in 1990 show his range. In the 1990s he developed the false subway entrances of Metro-Net World Connection and the installation The Happy End of Franz Kafka's 'Amerika', alongside his drawings on hotel stationery. He died in Vienna in 1997 at the age of 44.
His reputation has grown since his death, marked by large retrospectives such as the one at Tate Modern in 2006. In 2011 a cleaning error damaged his work Wenn es anfängt durch die Decke zu tropen, which brought renewed attention to his art.