Dictionary
The Hamburg New Wild Artists

Rampancy and a spontaneous vehemence is what characterizes the painting of especially the Berlin "Neuen Wilden" (New Wild Ones) and, slightly less obsessive, also the art of the Cologne group of the "Mülheimer Freiheit", however, the Hamburg Wild Ones were working in a more target-oriented and thoughtful manner. The Hamburg artists Werner Büttner (born in 1954), Martin Kippenberger (1953-97) and Albert Oehlen (born in 1954) also swiftly jerked their paintings onto the canvas, but their often quite pastose strokes of the brush seem to be more considerate than ecstatic.
In a direct comparison with the Berlin artists, some clear distinguishing features become obvious, while the art in Berlin was dominated by lurid, signal-like, thin emulsion paint, the artists in Hamburg preferred thickly applied oil in broken and dull tones. The rather small formats of the Hamburg artists accentuate the squalidness of a deliberate "dilettantish" color application.
In terms of contents, the art of the Hambrg Wild Ones, just as it was the case in Berlin and Cologne, was characterized by "controversial" current or historical topics, such as in case of "Morgenlicht fällt ins Führerhauptquartier" (Morning Sun in the Führer Headquarter) by Albert Oehlen (1982). However, the intention of art is not a utopian change of the social circumstances - the painters were just giving an often ironic or at times even cynical account of present circumstances, a mindset in line with "Postmodernism".