Martin Kippenberger
German
Over the course of two intensely productive decades, Martin Kippenberger challenged consumer culture, mass media, and the art world establishment through a diverse and provocative body of work. Embracing Neo-Expressionism while subverting its conventions, he produced a wide array of paintings, sculptures, photographs, collages, and installations that were both irreverent and conceptually layered. Drawing from an eclectic mix of influences—including Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Sigmar Polke, Pop Art, Social Realism, and punk—Kippenberger fused historical references with biting humor to forge new, unpredictable modes of artmaking.Known for his self-referential and often absurd self-portraits, Kippenberger frequently borrowed and recontextualized the work of others. In 1987, he famously transformed a Gerhard Richter monochrome into a functioning coffee table. Earlier, in his 1981 series Lieber Maler, Male Mir (“Dear Painter, Paint for Me”), he outsourced several paintings to a Berlin sign painter named Werner, then credited the results to the fictional “Werner Kippenberger,” blurring authorship and authorship's authority.Though his life was cut short, Kippenberger exhibited widely throughout Europe and the United States. His legacy has only grown, with major retrospectives at institutions such as Tate Modern, Kunsthalle Basel, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Today, his work commands millions on the secondary market.