Literature: Gisela Capitain, Regina Fiorito & Lisa Franzen: “Martin Kippenberger: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume 4 1993–1997”, The Estate of Martin Kippenberger, Cologne 2014, cat. no. MK.P 1996.27, ill. p.p. 264–265.

Exhibited: “Martin Kippenberger - Bitte nicht auf die Bilder setzen”, Galerie Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen, October - November 1996. Exhibited: “Martin Kippenberger - Retrospektive 1997–1976”, Musée d'art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneve, 1997. Exhibited: “Martin Kippenberger - Retrospektive 1997–1976”, Castello di Rivoli, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli/Turin, 1998.

Provenance: Galerie Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen (label on the reverse). Provenance: Private collection, Denmark. Acquired from the above by the present owner.

A certificate of authenticity from Galerie Gisela Capitain, dated Cologne April 20 2004, is enclosed.

Martin Kippenberger is today considered – both in spite of and by virtue of his short, intense life as an artist and public person – as one of the most important figures of German and European art from the 1980s and 1990s. He is of the same generation as the group of young and “wild” painters who during this period invaded the art scene with highly intense works of art, yet Kippenberger distinguished himself significantly from his contemporaries. This distinction was due both to his broader, conceptual work method and more particularly his deliberate rejection of a recognizable or consistent style. Kippenberger’s nomadic oeuvre consists of all imaginable media – from paintings and sculptures to installations and books – where he constantly reuses or recycles his own portrait or lets his own former works be resurrected in later works, seemingly in perpetuity. This is also the case in the offered series of five paintings, which in terms of motifs build on the artist's extensive installation “The Happy End of Franz Kafka's America”, 1994 (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam). The series was exhibited in 1996 in several places, including Copenhagen where the paintings had been created.

In other works, Kippenberger’s often recurring self-presentation can remind you of Jeff Koons’ work. This recurring practice is also at play in the series here both with a reference to the 1994 installation as well as in the work itself with the five paintings' variation of the installation's motif. Kippenberger’s practice is reminiscent of one of the absolute leading figures within Pop Art, Andy Warhol, who truly sought to break down the concepts of originality, genuineness and authenticity.

In general, Kippenberger worked in opposition to the dominant belief during the 1990s that painting was a dead artform, where it towards the turn of the century was deemed hopeless to attempt to produce something original and authentic within this medium. On the whole, the sanctified, elevated and unified image of the artist came under fire in Kippenberger's life and practice, perhaps because of his background in punk music, which already in the late 1970s made a virtue of derailing genre expectations and celebrating the anti-hero, ugliness and the seemingly random or devil-may-care performance.