Martin Kippenberger

Born in 1953 in Dortmund, Germany, Martin Kippenberger attended the Hochschule für bildende Künste (University of Visual Arts) in Hamburg. He was a peripatetic artist, taking up residence in numerous cities throughout his career, including Florence, Berlin, Paris, Cologne, Madrid, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, and Vienna. A major retrospective of his work, Respektive 1997–1976, organized by Musée d’art moderne et contemporain in Geneva, opened just two months before he died in March 1997. Numerous survey exhibitions followed after his death, including several in 2003, on the occasion of the artist’s 50th birthday year (in Karlsruhe, Tübingen, and Braunschweig, Germany; Eindhoven, The Netherlands; and Vienna, Austria). In 2006, Tate Modern, London, and K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, jointly organized Martin Kippenberger. This exhibition is the first major exhibition of Kippenberger’s work to be mounted in the United States.