Martin Kippenberger - born the artist

Martin Kippenberger was born in Dortmund in 1953, in the middle of a large family with four sisters, which was kept "on track" by an ambitious and dominant father. Kippenberger is said to have been a sensitive and rebellious child who had a hard time at school, including some rounds of honor and an involuntary departure from the boarding school.

He probably got enough attention in his youth, some viewers later believe that it could have been too much attention. Artistic experience was very important in the family, there was a family rule, according to which every experience should be documented in writing or with a photo, and drawing was also part of everyday life, also for Martin.

Already in Martin Kippenberger's early drawings, later critics recognize a penchant for self -stylization , and his later consistently conspicuous desire for attention is already being attributed to his position in the much -headed family, in which the individual only enjoyed a sympathy on his birthday.

However, these sensations of insufficient attention on the one hand, but never even suggested loneliness on the other hand could implement Kippenberger well in his artist life, in pictures, installations, performances, sculptures and photographs that have now made him one of the most respected artists in the world - on the worldwide ranking of art (after sales), he ranks in an honorable 18th place .

Kippenberger studied art, and at the age of 19 he wrote down at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg . He had respected teachers, the Hamburg artist Claus Böhmler, Arnold Hauser, who looked at art from the perspective of some European countries and many disciplines, and Franz Erhard Walther, who, with his "participatory art", is now among the central figures of contemporary art after the 1960s.

Kippenberger's beginnings - restless times

In the long run, these teachers Kippenberger could not convince and captivate, in 1976 he broke his studies from and on Florence, where he painted black and white blackboard paintings after postcards and photographs, large-format representation on a fixed surface, to which he will return in his last years of life, but then, with the exhaustion of all artistic possibilities, from simple oil painting to collagen-like processing.

In 1977 he wants to exhibit these pictures in Hamburg, gets to know the painter Werner Büttner and above all Albert and Markus Oehlen, so the core of the group was already gathered, which will soon be averted by concept art, propagates the "return" of painting and in the 1980s as "new wild" or "young wild" of painting.

Büttner lived in Berlin and made the city of Kippenberger tasty quickly, he moved to the "anarchist front city" in 1978 and founded Gisela Capitain "Kippenberger's office" for exhibitions by young artists.

That was not all, in 1979 he took over from Klaus-Dieter Brennecke the legendary event hall SO36 , also brought carefree access to alcohol and drugs, and at the same time, Kippenberger dipped deep into the world of punk.

Kippenberger's departure into the world and the artistic diversity

For the then only 25-year-old Kippenberger, Berlin was nothing more than a starting ramp, in 1980 he went to Paris to become a writer, worked the following year in Stuttgart and in the Black Forest, 1983 in Cologne and Vienna, where he met the famous Austrian sculptor Franz West .

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

In 1984 the artist joined the Lord Jim Loge, an association of artists and writers, at the end of the 1980s, Kippenberger went to Spain with Albert Oehlen, they painted in Madrid and Sevilla, in 1989 it moved on to Los Angeles, where he takes pictures with latex coating.

In this decade, Kippenberger became almost unstoppable, while in the 1970s he was more of an insider tip of the unbound youth, the adult art world became aware of him: from 1980 it was shown at some interesting exhibitions, in 1981 at the group exhibition "Rundschau Deutschland", 1984 he was in the exhibition "Tiefing Blacks - Art of the 1980s ..." in the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt in The same year at the exhibition "From here - two months new German art in Düsseldorf".

In 1986 he had brought it to the first solo exhibition, "rent - electricity - gas" in the Hessian State Museum of Darmstadt, and in 1988 he was invited to the legendary exhibition "Made in Cologne" , on which he was exhibited together with (later) celebrities such as Markus Lüpertz, Sigmar Polke, Isa Genzken , Ar Penck, Georg Herold and Rosemarie Trockel .

Kippenberger is looking for family and finds fame

In between, he produced daughter Helena Augusta Eleonore with girlfriend Gabriele Hirsch in 1989, whose first ultrasound image Georg Herold had immediately transformed into one of his famous caviar pictures, showed so much artistic predictions, daughter Helena today deals with graffiti and street art .

Kippenberger's wish to find an anchor point in the small family should soon fail on the artist's increase in work and location.

Whether the colleagues of the Lord Jim Loge really kept their motto "nobody helps", or whether they just hadn't had enough influence, no longer played a role that had set the course for Kippenberger's promotion since he appeared well -known names in Cologne in the area of ​​the artist.

In 1988 he was able to take part in the Biennale in Venice with the object "Lantern to Drunk" , in 1990 he was offered a visiting professorship at the Städelschule Frankfurt, from 1992 he taught at the college in Kassel and in the same year he taught guest readings at the universities in Nice and Amsterdam and at Yale University in the American Connecticut.

In 1994 Kippenberger created his first sculptures from aluminum, in 1996 he received the Käthe-Kollwitz Prize of the Academy of the Arts (Berlin) and thus the "official state recognition", in 1997 he can be seen on the tenth documenta in Kassel and on the third sculpture .

However, the artist can personally look after his work on the documenta nor on the sculpture.

The eternally restless spirit had found a little more calm with the wedding with photographer Elfie Semotan than before in his network of relatives and companions, the diagnosis came as a surprise and led to death very quickly.

Kippenberger lives on

Kippenberger fame grew after his early death: in 1999 he was exhibited in the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, in 2003 his works together with Candida Höfers work the German Pavilion at the 50th Biennale of Venice and an exhibition in Karlsruhe, in 2006 the London Tate Modern is organizing the first British retrospective of its work, from 2008 to this day is art of Martin Kippenberger in im im im im im im Museion in Bolzano, in the MoMA in New York, in the Hamburg Kunsthalle, in the Museo Picasso in Málaga and until August 2013 in the Hamburg train station, Museum of Present Berlin.

His works can be found in numerous public collections , e.g. B. in the Hessian State Museum of Darmstadt, in the K21 art collection in North Rhine-Westphalia in Düsseldorf, in the Frankfurter Städel Museum, in the Karlsruhe Center for Art and Media Technology, in the Cologne Museum Ludwig and in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.

Abroad you can view art by Martin Kippenberger in Zurich (Migros Museum of Contemporary Art), 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 of European and American cities.

Provocation with and without humor

When an art critic writes about Martin Kippenberger, he almost always writes about provocation. There is certainly enough provocation in Kippenberger's work, especially for people who already see every questioning as a provocation.

Sometimes, however, it seems more about purest sarcasm, e.g. B. if a picture of many three -dimensional beams get the title "I cannot discover a swastika with the best will in the world", and sometimes the artist in the title of a picture probably just says the truth about his state of mind, as with self -portrait "please do not send home".

In any case, the art of Kippenberger is still suitable today in order to attend violent discussions. So z. B. his sculpture "first his feet", which was created in 1990, in which Kippenberger put a crucified frog a beer mug and an egg in his hands, provided plenty of hustle and bustle in 2008 when she was supposed to represent modern art to reopen the Museion (Bolzano Museum).

The sculpture hardly hung in the museum, when the President of the South Tyrolean regional council already blamed it for the violation of the religious feelings of his national citizens, Pope Benedict XVI. Supported him by letter, and President Pahl even stepped into the hunger strike so that the frog left the museum.

Despite the "demanding" dialect seals in South Tyrolean regional newspapers ("The frog must be very wicking fa our Schianen Tirolerfleck!" Or "Dö art is nothing for our country, she should go to where it comes from!") Wanted the freedom of art at least until the exhibition, but then lost both regional council president Pahl and museum director Diserenz with her job. Pahl then taught literature at a commercial school, Diserenz continued to make international career in the art business.

The most recent excitement in connection with Kippenberger was in November 2011 in the Museum Ostwall in Dortmund when a cleaning lady "when it starts to drop through the ceiling" and thus destroyed, a real approach to Beuys (which also ranks before Kippenberger).

Then and now Kippenberger was and is revered by artists and artists who also want to deal with the dirty, cheeky and banale in art who begin to smile in terms such as "Dada" and "Fluxus" and who simply love the language joke of the painter and writer, actor and musician, dancers and installation artists, sculptors and photographers.

Sayings like "Every artist is a person" (in the liberating reversal of Beuys' "Everyone is an artist" ), who has been a suggestion "I break, come with?" Or self -supervised quotes such as "He wanted to go up, but he only came up to the middle" will remain unforgettable.

Numerous works of art on Pinterest