Michael Krebber

Michael Krebber was born on 26 April 1954 in Cologne, Germany. In the 1970s he studied painting at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Karlsruhe under Markus Lupertz and Georg Baselitz; no source confirms a formal degree or the exact years of study. He went on to work as a studio assistant to Georg Baselitz from 1979 to 1980 and to Martin Kippenberger from 1986 to 1987, two formative apprenticeships that placed him at the center of the Cologne art scene of the period.

Krebber's own work developed as a running interrogation of painting itself, using sparse gestures, appropriated imagery, and installation choices that often withhold a finished picture. From 2002 to 2016 he was professor of painting at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt am Main, a position that made him an influential teacher as well as a practicing artist. He has shown with Galerie Buchholz since 1997, with the 2025 to 2026 exhibition Angeldust described by the gallery as his ninth solo exhibition there, and he is also represented by Greene Naftali in New York, where he held a solo exhibition in 2024, as well as by Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris, dependance in Brussels, and Maureen Paley in London. According to German-language sources, he has been married to the artist Cosima von Bonin since 1992. As of the most recent gallery documentation, he lives and works in New York and Cologne.

Institutional writing on Krebber consistently frames his practice as a sustained questioning of painting rather than a body of finished statements. He received the Wolfgang Hahn Prize from the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in 2015, awarded jointly with R. H. Quaytman, one of the most significant honors bestowed by that institution. His exhibition history, from early institutional group shows through solo presentations at Kunsthalle Bern (2017), the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto (2016), and CAPC Bordeaux (2012), reflects a critical consensus that treats him as a key link between the Cologne generation of Baselitz and Kippenberger and later conceptual painting practice.

Krebber's market is thin and not primarily auction-driven. Public auction databases show only scattered results, most consistent with a modest secondary market; a documented example is Ohne Titel, which sold for EUR 792 including premium at Van Ham Kunstauktionen in Cologne on 12 November 2025. Comprehensive price-ranked data needed to confirm the artist's all-time auction record sit behind paywalled services, so no verified high price can be reported here. His network of representing galleries, Galerie Buchholz, Greene Naftali, Galerie Chantal Crousel, dependance, and Maureen Paley, together with his long museum exhibition history, remain the strongest available signals of his standing.

Public auction data for Krebber is sparse, and the fullest documented example located for this profile, EUR 792 for an Ohne Titel work at Van Ham Kunstauktionen in November 2025, is a modest result rather than any confirmed record; the artist's true all-time auction high could not be verified from public sources. No catalogue raisonne has been confirmed, so provenance and verification depend heavily on his representing galleries, led by Galerie Buchholz and Greene Naftali. Collectors should weigh his deep institutional and teaching record, and the museum collections that hold his work, against the reality that his secondary market has not yet generated the kind of repeat-sale data needed to support a confident price trajectory.