Martin Kippenberger was born in Dortmund, Germany, in 1953, to a mine director and a dermatologist. He showed artistic talent, and independence, at at early age, boycotting art classes in elementary school after a teacher gave him only the second highest grade. Since then his work has been exhibited at museums and galleries worldwide, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Until his death in 1997, he lived and worked in Austria.