Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997)

Executed in 1972 in a cornucopia of coloured wax crayon, Untitled is a psychedelic self-portrait carried out in the same year that Kippenberger began his studies at the Hochschule für bildende Kunst, Hamburg. Uniting two side profiles of the artist and a full frontal depiction of his face, Kippenberger has rendered his young, handsome, aquiline features with the greatest care, rending his hair with a rainbow palette of indigo through brilliant orange to lime green. The resulting image is one that recalls David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, with his glam rock aesthetic. Falling beneath the artist's placid stare, Kippenberger has drawn a languishing female nude, her head replaced by a stopwatch whose time has been suspended. It is an oneiric image that perfectly captures the Zeitgeist of the 1970s, the room revolving like a vivid hallucination.