Untitled (Don’t Wake Daddy). crayon on hotel stationery. 10,5″ x 7″. 1995. courtesy Metro Pictures

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Untitled. pencil, ink, marker on paper. 11,5″ x 8″. 1990. courtesy Metro Pictures

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Untitled. pastel on paper. 11,5″ x 8″. 1990. courtesy Metro Pictures

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Untitled. 1993. R. Jeffrey Edwards
Untitled. 1993. Freidrich Christian Flick Collection

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Untitled. pencil on paper. 11,75″ x 8.5″. 1992. courtesy Metro Pictures

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German artist MARTIN KIPPENBERGER had a short life (1953-1997) but he managed to test and probe a dizzying range of styles and medias like painting, performance, sculpture, collage, video, drawing and installation.

His most intimate works were his “Hotel Drawings”. KIPPENBERGER made hundreds of drawings on hotel stationery, a body of work that comes across as a kind of travel diary. Although he often lived in hotels for weeks or even months, he didn’t stay at all the hotels whose notepaper he used, often picking it up from other sources. The stationery became, like so many things he encountered, a readymade material for his art.

Using common writing and drawing implements, he expressed the ideas that occupied his mind at particular times. He often made these sketches after or in the middle of a painting, sculpture or larger project, and each work is both a standalone artwork and a fragment or extension of an ongoing narrative.

Definitively legendary, just like his extravagant author!