Markus Oehlen

Markus Oehlen – Between art studies and punk music

Markus Oehlen was born in 1956 in Krefeld. The son of the graphic artist and cartoonist Adolf Oehlen, he came into contact with drawing and painting from an early age. Following his brother, two years his elder, he also chose art as a career, beginning with an apprenticeship as technical draughtsman and pursued further by studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Markus Oehlen became master student of the Swiss painter, graphic artist and sculptor Alfonso Hüppi and regularly frequented the famous artists’ pub Ratinger Hof, where fruitful exchanges with other creative spirits took place. Oehlen was interested in music as well as fine art, and was a member of the punk and rock bands Charley’s Grils, Mittagspause, and Fehlfarben. He released several music CDs including the album ‘Jailhouse Indigo’ with his brother Albert Oehlen and the jazz musician Rüdiger Carl, and also worked as a DJ.

Rebellious art without fixed classification

As one of the most important representatives of the ‘Neue Wilde’, Markus Oehlen protests against bourgeois values and outdated academic ideas of art. Characteristic of Marcus Oehlen’s painting style are superimposed motifs, bright colours and – particularly in recent years – figurative allusions.
Oehlen’s oeuvre also includes painted sculptures and graphic experiments oriented to other media such as computer grids or video lines. The artist thus lends punk music a painterly guise. Markus Oehlen has received prizes and awards for his art, including the Berlin Art Prize in 1987.
Markus Oehlen lives and works primarily in Munich – in a studio house built for him by the architects Westner, Schührer and Zöhrer, featuring a large skylight which provides particularly favourable lighting conditions.