Werner Büttner was born in Jena, Germany in 1954, currently lives and works in Geesthacht, Germany.  In his early years, Werner Büttner went through the East-West German Cold War. With experience as a prison social worker and legal aid provider, Büttner is renowned for drawing out deeper layers of meaning from quotidian life that at first glance seem banal.  He has a unique ability to observe and interpret the experiences of different social strata of humanity amidst turbulent overarching circumstances. His canvases and collages depict a tragi-comic reality, confronting social norms with both irony and satire, while retaining a firm grip on the history of painting.

Driven by this unapologetic philosophy, Büttner, alongside Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997, Germany) and Albert Oehlen (b.1954), became a reactive voice in Hamburg in the late 1970s. The trio felt that art needed to depict the failures of human morality within society. The subversive visual language they shaped, dubbed ‘Bad Painting’, dispensed with painterly conventions of technique and taste, in favour of an aesthetic that defiantly reinvented the medium.