This biography from the Archives of AskART:
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 Markus Lupertz was born in Kiberec, Bohemia on April 25, 1941. His family fled Czechoslovakia in 1948 and settled in the town of Rheydt in the Rhineland where his father was a businessman. Even as a child he wanted to be an artist, from the first drawings of cowboys that he made. From 1956 to 1961 his life resembled a collage: studying at the Werkunstschule in Krefeld; living at a monastery south of Bonn where he painted crucifixes for nine months in 1959; spending a year working days as a coal miner, where he studied at night at Krefeld and at Dusseldorf's Kunstakademie. Then he worked on a road crew and hung out in Paris. In 1961 he became a full-time artist, out on his own.
Up until this time Lupertz's work was largely figurative and he relied on traditional Christian symbols to create allegorical paintings. In 1963 he began his "Dithyrambic Paintings" a series of nonfigurative, geometric abstractions, centered, for instance, on the figure of Donald Duck, etc. They were not a success. But Lupertz kept painting and promoting himself. Finally in 1970, things started turning around for him.
Lupertz's personal style didn't soften his image. Along with his green Rolls Royce, he had a taste for dandyish outfits he had custom tailored in London, lots of gold rings and an earring to boot. Though he was utterly reserved about his private life, and his marriage, his larger-than-life bravado was fashioned for public consumption.
Written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.
Source:
The Doubting Dandy by Ferdinand Protzman in ARTnews, October 1993
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