Albert Oehlen first came to prominence as a painter in Cologne and Berlin in the early 1980s. Together with his peers Martin Kippenberger, Werner Büttner, and brother Markus Oehlen, he was variously associated with the Neue Wilde scene and purposeful forays into “bad painting.” In the realm of music, he is best known for contributions to the Red Krayola, which began in 1989 with the album Malefactor, Ade, though his musical collaborations with Kippenberger and others date from the start of his career.
Today Oehlen is one of Germany’s most celebrated artists and among the preeminent painters of our era. From 2000– 2009 he was Professor of Painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and he is portrayed with eye-popping abandon by the actor Ben Becker in the 2021 feature film The Painter (dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel).