This Fellow is Playing on Luxus
- Artist: Martin Kippenberger
- Date: 1979
- Medium: Lithograph on paper
- Dimensions: image: 355 x 216 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is “This Fellow is Playing on Luxus” by Martin Kippenberger. It’s a 1979 lithograph that doubled as a promotional poster for the first single, “Luxus,” by Kippenberger’s punk band Grugas. The face in the center is Eric Mitchell, one of the band’s members, and the image is as cheeky and irreverent as the music itself.
Kippenberger was a real multi‑talent—he painted, sculpted, wrote, and performed. His posters, over 170 in total, were an essential part of his practice, blurring the line between commercial advertising and fine art. This piece comes from the very early stage of his career, before he started grouping his work into folios in 1986. It shows him already embracing collaboration, subverting expectations, and pushing the limits of what a poster could be.
In short, the poster is a snapshot of a young artist who never wanted to be boxed into one role, and it captures the raw energy of Berlin’s punk scene in the late seventies.
See it in person
This Fellow is Playing on Luxus is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
