Markus Lupertz was born in Liberec, Bohemia on April 25, 1941. His family fled Czechoslovakia in 1948 and settled in the town of Rheydt in the Rhineland where his father was a businessman. Even as a child he wanted to be an artist, from the first drawings of cowboys that he made. From 1956 to 1961 his life resembled a collage: studying at the Werkkunstschule in Krefeld; living at a monastery south of Bonn where he painted crucifixes for nine months in 1959; spending a year working days as a coal miner, where he studied at night at Krefeld and at Dusseldorf's Kunstakademie. Then he worked on a road crew and hung out in Paris. In 1961 he became a full-time artist, out on his own.

Up until this time Lupertz's work was largely figurative and he relied on traditional Christian symbols to create allegorical paintings. In 1963 he began his "Dithyrambic Paintings" a series of nonfigurative, geometric abstractions, centered, for instance, on the figure of Donald Duck, etc. They were not a success. But Lupertz kept painting and promoting himself. Finally in 1970, things started turning around for him.

Lupertz's personal style didn't soften his image. Along with his green Rolls Royce, he had a taste for dandyish outfits he had custom tailored in London, lots of gold rings and an earring to boot. Though he was utterly reserved about his private life, and his marriage, his larger-than-life bravado was fashioned for public consumption.

Written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.

Source:
The Doubting Dandy by Ferdinand Protzman in ARTnews, October 1993

Markus Lüpertz (b. 1941)

Born in Reichenberg in 1941, he is one of the most important German artists of the present. His work has been influencing the German art for over 50 years. In the 1960s still part of the West Berlin Bohème, he was a professor at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe in the 1970s, and director of the Dusseldorf Art Academy from 1988 to 2009. At the same time, he was extremely productive and constantly developed his style. He was influenced, among others, by the legends of the ancient world, the literature (he writes himself), the art history (a work cycle, for example, is devoted to Corot) and the history, particularly the German history of the 20th century. The artist stylized himself as a 'prince of painters' and genius, and is also known in this role.

He received numerous honors and awards, and exhibited, for instance, at the documenta in Kassel. His works are part of major international museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao.