Note: Dedicated on original matte to Helena and Gaby.

Ever on the move throughout the world, Martin Kippenberger would use what he could as far as drawing materials were concerned, including the hotel’s stationary from where he was staying. Executed in colored chalk and pencil, this untitled drawing from 1991 exemplifies the artist’s love for the cartoon vignettes he often created, complete with technicolor trousers, sports coat, and a haunting visage that has been rubbed out and replaced with a schematic face. These stationary drawings by Kippenberger would range from self-portraits and sexual fantasies to diagrammatic outlines for future projects, all of which maintain the artist’s desire to go beyond classifications of genre, taste, and style.

German artist Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997) created humorous and ironic work which focused around the artist’s place within modern society. His often controversial art knew no boundaries, using paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and installations to expose the underlying issues in humanity. Never one to follow the rules, Kippenberger strove to go beyond the boundaries of ‘high art’ by creating his own genres and recycling those that came before him. Drawing inspiration from an amalgamation of movements including Pop, Social Realism, Neo-Expressionism, and Geometric Abstraction as well as from artists such as Pablo Picasso, Sigmar Polk,and Joseph Beuys, he created his own completely unique artwork that reassessed the function of artists in history and society. Though his premature death at the age of 44 was tragic, his legacy continues to live on as his work was recently on display in a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY.


Select Public Collections:
Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY)
Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL)
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, CA)
Tate Gallery (London, UK)