Albert Oehlen was born in Krefeld in 1954. After his training from 1970 to 1973, Oehlen became a book dealer, only to attend the 'Hochschule für Bildende Künste' in Hamburg in 1974, where he studied art under Sigmar Polke until 1981. In 1976, while still studying, Albert Oehlen co-founded the 'Liga zur Bekämpfung widersprüchlichen Verhaltens' together with Werner Büttner, an association, which expressed their artistic and political opinions by staging funny anarchist happenings. Oehlen began showing his work in joint exhibitions with his brother Markus Oehlen in 1978. Albert Oehlen not only saw himself as a painter, between 1979 and 1984 he also produced various records together with his brother Markus, A.R. Penck, Martin Kippenberger, Jörg Immendorf and Werner Büttner. With their happenings, some of which were critical and some disturbingly aggressive, they provoked the audience and vehemently interfered with political issues. In the 1980s Albert Oehlen produced his serial 'Malerei über Malerei' (painting on painting), in which he combined abstract and figurative elements of painting. In 1986 and 1987 Albert Oehlen and Martin Kippenberger traveled through Germany to hold public speeches, in 1992 Oehlen set up a studio in a tower of the city walls of Segovia, where he began to work on computer pictures. It was not until the 1990s that Oehlen returned his focus to painting, while continuing to work on his computer collages. With his work Bionic Botanic, which was shown in the exhibition In Between at EXPO 2000 in Hanover, Albert Oehlen successfully presented his artistic intentions to the public.
