The artist Thomas Zipp passed away on Good Friday 2026. The art magazine monopol reported this the following day, citing the Berlin gallery Barbara Thumm, which represents Zipp.
Image above: Thomas Zipp, A. WOW!, 2024, Collage, framed, image courtesy of the artist and Galerie Barbara Thumm, presented in the framework of Rohkunstbau 2025
Since the 1990s, Zipp has been one of the defining voices of contemporary German art. Born in Heppenheim in 1966, he studied under Thomas Bayerle at the Städelschule in Frankfurt and at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Since 2008, he has taught as a professor of painting and multimedia at the Berlin University of the Arts.
His works rarely fell neatly into distinct categories. Painting, installation and performance intertwined. In visual and thematic collages, he allowed science, religion and social systems of order to challenge one another. Zipp was interested in the unstable, in states of limbo. His visual worlds were often imbued with a dry, obstinate irony.
Thomas Zipp has exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale and in museums and institutions in New York, London and Zurich.
The cause of death has not yet been disclosed.
