Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997)

Executed in 1996, Untitled offers a tender depiction of Kippenberger standing side by side with his daughter Helena. Born in 1988, Helena is depicted as a little girl, still clutching her father's hand. A bittersweet recollection, the work was carried out shortly before the artist's premature death. Carefully rendered, the work is replete with fine lines and washes of watercolour: vivid purple for the artist's coat and corn yellow for the child's hair. Captured on hotel stationary from the infamous Château Marmont on Sunset Boulevard, it reflects the artist's itinerant lifestyle, never settling in any one location for any great length of time. As his sister Susanne Kippenberger later recalled, 'near the end of his life, some six months before he died, Martin told a friend that Hamburg in general and Polke in particular had ruined him by giving him the idea of turning his own life into art; 'throwing one's physical, bodily existence onto the scales. We had to, back then, at the price of destroying ourselves.' But by then, in 1996, Martin felt that it was too late to change course' (S. Kippenberger, The Kippenberger Clan, New York 2011, n.p.).