German artist Martin Kippenberger worked easily across a range of mediums – as a painter, drawer, photographer, sculptor – creating an energized body of work that engaged ideas of artistic selfhood in face of art historical precedent. His Raft of the Medusa took up Gericault’s well-known oil painting (1819), retelling the image of the shipwrecked frigate with a suite of interrelated prints, while substituting his own contorted figure throughout the artwork. Other works of self-portraiture, on paper and canvas, share a familiar mixture of self-aggrandizement with the honest and banal.

Kippenberger’s prolific output extended into printed material and he generated a huge number of posters, invitation cards and print ephemera in support of his exhibitions. While in Berlin he set up his own publishing imprint ‘Pikasso’s Erben Verlag’, and often worked with institutions and publishers to put out artists’ publications that incorporated elements from his drawing, collage and photography.

His elusive artists’ project Old Vienna Posters (included here) was published by Grazer Kunstverein in 1992, on occasion of the exhibition “Plakate” (a group-show also featuring the work of Fierce Pussy, Christopher Wool, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and others). Offset printed in full-color, each page is composed of a full-bleed image showing overlapping flyers posted around the streets of Vienna, enlarged to such a degree that any details are dissolved into gorgeous abstracted compositions.

Another work “Hotel Hotel” gathers the drawings that Kippenberger created on hotel stationary during his extensive travels between 1987 to 1991. The quick pencil drawings, sometimes with collaged elements, show views of his hotel room, portraits of friends, and sketches of hands. Published by Walther Konig in an edition of 950, the book reproduces (most) works at their original size, with variable paper stock.