Martin Kippenberger – born an artist

Martin Kippenberger was born in Dortmund in 1953, into a large family with four sisters, kept "in line" by an artistically ambitious and domineering father. Kippenberger is said to have been a sensitive and rebellious child who struggled at school, repeating several grades and being expelled from boarding school.

He certainly received plenty of attention in his youth; some observers later felt it might have been too much. Artistic expression was highly valued in the family; there was a family rule that every experience had to be documented in writing or with a photograph, and drawing was also part of everyday life, including for Martin.

Even in Martin Kippenberger's early drawings, later critics recognized a tendency towards self-stylization , and his later consistently conspicuous desire for attention was sometimes attributed to his position in the large family, in which the individual only enjoyed truly focused attention on his birthday.

However, Kippenberger was able to successfully translate these feelings of insufficient attention on the one hand, but never even hinted at loneliness on the other, into his artistic life, in paintings, installations, performances, sculptures and photographs that have now made him one of the most respected artists in the world – he ranks an honorable 18th in the worldwide art ranking (by sales) .

Kippenberger studied art, enrolling at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts He had renowned teachers, including the Hamburg artist Claus Böhmler, Arnold Hauser, who viewed art from the perspective of several European countries and many disciplines, and Franz Erhard Walther, whose “participatory art” makes him one of the central figures of contemporary art since the 1960s.

Kippenberger's Beginnings – Turbulent Times

These teachers could not convince and captivate Kippenberger in the long run; in 1976 he broke off his studies and went to Florence, where he painted black and white panel paintings based on postcards and photographs – large-format depictions on solid surfaces, to which he would return in his last years of life, but then by exhausting all artistic possibilities from simple oil painting to collage-like processing of various materials.

In 1977 he wanted to exhibit these paintings in Hamburg, where he met the painter Werner Büttner and, above all, Albert and Markus Oehlen; thus, the core of the group that would soon turn away from conceptual art, propagate the “return” of painting, and become known in the 1980s as the “New Wild Ones” or “Young Wild Ones” of painting, was already gathered here.

“Kippenberger’s Office” with Gisela Capitain .

SO36 event hall from Klaus-Dieter Brennecke , which, in addition to management, also brought carefree access to alcohol and drugs; with the founding of the band "Die Grugas," Kippenberger simultaneously immersed himself in the world of punk.

Kippenberger's departure into the world and artistic diversity

For Kippenberger, who was only 25 at the time, Berlin was nothing more than a launching pad; in 1980 he went to Paris to become a writer, worked in Stuttgart and the Black Forest the following year, and in 1983 in Cologne and Vienna, where he met the famous Austrian sculptor Franz West .

At that time, exhibition concepts and book projects were created, together with Werner Büttner and Albert Oehlen (e.g. “Truth is Work”, realized in 1984), for the first time pictures in color and the first ideas and designs for sculptures.

In 1984, the artist joined the Lord Jim Lodge, an association of artists and writers. At the end of the 1980s, Kippenberger went to Spain with Albert Oehlen; they painted in Madrid and Seville. In 1989, Kippenberger moved on to Los Angeles, where he created paintings with a latex coating.

During this decade, Kippenberger's popularity grew almost unstoppably. While in the 1970s he was considered more of a secret tip among unruly youth, the adult art world now also took notice of him: From 1980 onwards, his work was featured in several interesting exhibitions, including the group exhibition “Rundschau Deutschland” in 1981, the exhibition “Tiefe Blicke – Kunst der achtziger Jahre …” at the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt in 1984, and the exhibition “Von hier aus – Zwei Monate neue deutsche Kunst in Düsseldorf” in the same year.

In 1986 he had his first solo exhibition, “Rent – ​​Electricity – Gas” at the Hessian State Museum Darmstadt, and in 1988 he was invited to the legendary exhibition “Made in Cologne” , where he exhibited together with (later) celebrities such as Markus Lüpertz, Sigmar Polke, Isa Genzken , AR Penck, Georg Herold and Rosemarie Trockel .

Kippenberger seeks family and finds fame

In between, he and his girlfriend Gabriele Hirsch produced a daughter, Helena Augusta Eleonore, in 1989. Georg Herold immediately transformed her first ultrasound image into one of his famous caviar paintings; such artistic predisposition had lasting effects. Today, daughter Helena is involved with graffiti and street art .

Kippenberger's wish to find an anchor in the nuclear family, however, was soon to be thwarted by the artist's career, which involved frequent changes of job and location.

Whether the colleagues of the Lord Jim Lodge truly adhered to their motto "No one helps anyone" or whether they simply lacked enough influence was no longer relevant; the course for Kippenberger's rise had been set since he had appeared in Cologne in the circle of art connoisseurs.

In 1988 he was able to participate in the Venice Biennale with the object “Lantern to Drunks” , in 1990 he was offered a visiting professorship at the Städelschule Frankfurt, from 1992 he taught at the Gesamthochschule in Kassel and in the same year gave guest lectures at the universities in Nice and Amsterdam and at Yale University in Connecticut.

In 1994, Kippenberger created his first sculptures from aluminum; in 1996, he received the Käthe Kollwitz Prize from the Academy of Arts (Berlin) featured at the tenth documenta in Kassel and at the third Skulptur Projekte

However, the artist was unable to personally oversee his work at either documenta or Skulptur Projekte, both of which were held concurrently from the end of June to the end of September; he died of cancer on March 7th.

The eternally restless spirit had just found a little more peace through his marriage to photographer Elfie Semotan than before in his network of relatives and companions; the diagnosis came as a surprise and led very quickly to his death.

Kippenberger lives on

Kippenberger's fame grew even more after his early death: in 1999, his works were exhibited at the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg; in 2003, his works, together with those of Candida Höfer, filled the German Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale and an exhibition was shown in Karlsruhe; in 2006, the Tate Modern in London held the first British retrospective of his work; from 2008 to the present day, art by Martin Kippenberger has been on display at the Museion in Bolzano, the MoMA in New York, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Museo Picasso in Málaga, and until August 2013 at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart Berlin.

His works can be found in numerous public collections , e.g. in the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, in the K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, in the Karlsruhe Center for Art and Media Technology, in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.

Abroad you can view art by Martin Kippenberger in Zurich (Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst), Geneva (Mamco), Amsterdam (Stedelijk Museum) and London (The Saatchi Gallery, Tate Britain, Tate Gallery of Modern Art) and in many other art collections and museums in European and American cities.

Provocation with and without humor

When an art critic writes about Martin Kippenberger, they almost always mention provocation. Certainly, there is plenty of provocation to be found in Kippenberger's work, especially for people who already see any questioning as provocation.

Sometimes, however, it seems to be pure sarcasm, e.g., when a picture depicting many three-dimensionally stacked beams is titled “I can’t for the life of me see a swastika,” and sometimes the artist is probably just saying the truth about his state of mind in the title of a picture, as with the self-portrait “Please don’t send me home.”.

Kippenberger's art is certainly still capable of sparking heated discussions today. For example, his 1990 sculpture "Feet First," in which Kippenberger placed a beer mug and an egg in the hands of a crucified frog, caused quite a stir as recently as 2008 when it was intended to represent modern art at the reopening of the Museion (Bolzano Museum of Modern Art).

The sculpture had barely hung in the museum when the president of the South Tyrolean regional council blamed it for offending the religious feelings of his constituents; Pope Benedict XVI supported him by letter, and President Pahl even went on a hunger strike to make the frog leave the museum.

Despite “sophisticated” dialect poems in South Tyrolean regional newspapers (“The frog must be removed very quickly from our beautiful Tyrolean spot!” or “Art is no good for our land, it should go where it comes from!”), artistic freedom prevailed, at least until the end of the exhibition. Afterwards, however, both Regional Council President Pahl and Museum Director Diserenz lost their jobs. Pahl subsequently taught literature at a business school, while Diserenz continued her international career in the art world.

The most recent controversy surrounding Kippenberger occurred in November 2011 at the Museum Ostwall in Dortmund, when a cleaning woman scrubbed his artwork “Wenn's anfängt durch die Decke zu tropfen” (When it starts dripping through the ceiling) and thus destroyed it, a real homage to Beuys (who ranks ahead of Kippenberger in the art world).

Kippenberger was and is revered then and now by artists and art connoisseurs who want art to also address the dirty, the cheeky and the banal, who begin to smile at terms like “Dada” and “Fluxus” and who simply love the linguistic wit of the painter and writer, actor and musician, dancer and installation artist, sculptor and photographer.

Sayings like “Every artist is a human being” (in a liberating reversal of Beuys’ “Every human being is an artist” “I’m going to break, are you coming with me?” which was part of Berlin youth slang for a while , or self-aware quotes like “He wanted to go to the top, but he only got to the middle” will remain unforgettable to Kippenberger’s followers.

Numerous artworks on Pinterest

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Passionate author with lively art interest

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