Ralf König, born in Soest in 1960, painted too many Donalds as a child and, after a short career as a journeyman carpenter, which his parents said was promising, was suddenly and unexpectedly admitted to the State Art Academy in Düsseldorf in 1982, where he was taught oil paints, plasticine and painting for five years by number books. Unnoticed by the art professors, however, he secretly continued to draw illustrated stories. Although it was confirmed that he had a homosexual disposition that had to be taken seriously and that he had too much imagination, he was released after ten semesters. Since then he has penetrated the population at home and abroad with his uninhibited and hedonistic bulbous-nosed figures, which in 1993 (in an application for indexation by the Bavarian Youth Welfare Office) earned him the accusation of depicting homosexuality as something taken for granted and of discriminating against heterosexuality. (The application was rejected by the Federal Examination Office under the art reservation.) Ralf König lives and scribbles unmolested by the state authority in Cologne on the Rhine.