Uno di voi, un tedesco en Firenze

In 1976, Martin Kippenberger left Hamburg, where he had been studying painting at the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst since 1972. His goal was to stop working with art and instead become an actor. After moving from Hamburg to Florence, the capital of art in the Renaissance, he discarded his rebellious plans in favor of painting a series of black, white and gray paintings, a large portion of which focused on portraiture. Each of the paintings in this series, which he titled 'Uno di voi, un tedesco in Firenze' (One of You, A German in Florence), shared the uniform format of 60 x 50 cm and were based on souvenir postcards and photos shot by the artist himself. Kippenberger's goal was to paint as many pictures as necessary so that, when they were piled one on top of the other, they would measure as high as the artist himself, namely 189 cm. The result would be a new kind of self-portrait, with the artist's actual works of art, instead of a mere physiognomic illustration, standing proxy for the true identity of the painter. The project was, however, never completed. With a total of approximately 70 paintings, 10 cm were still missing.