Baselitz in the Studio

Baselitz emerged as a pioneer of an expressive style of painting in Germany in the early 1960s. Seven years old when the Second World War ended, he was raised in the countryside of Saxony, and his painterly concerns were influenced by his experience of growing up in postwar Germany. He sought to confront the question of what it meant to be German and a German artist in a postwar world.

The Saxonian landscape of his childhood has been employed by Baselitz as a motif and has held a central position in his work since. In Über das Wasser (2004), Baselitz uses gestural and spontaneous flashes of bright, transparent color to depict the inverted bottom half of a figure standing at the entry to a wooded path. The legs float upside down against the backdrop of a pond and pale woodland. The image of a fragment of leg, especially of a foot (sometimes in a shoe), has been an important element in Baselitz's paintings since the 1960s, and can often be interpreted as a self-reference.

One of the most important German artists of the post-war period, Hans-Georg Kern was born in 1938 in the Saxon village of Deutschbaselitz. In 1961 he adopted the name Georg Baselitz in homage to his birthplace. Baselitz has exhibited his work internationally for decades and has participated in numerous important group exhibitions around the world including A New Spirit in Painting, curated by Norman Rosenthal for the Royal Academy of Art in London (1981), Zeitgeist at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (1982), and multiple presentations at documenta (1972, 1982) and at the Venice Biennale (1980, 1993, 2003, 2007, 2015). Since his 1963 solo debut at Galerie Werner & Katz in Berlin, major solo presentations include a retrospective organized by the Guggenheim Museum, New York, that traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., the Nationalgalerie Berlin (1995-96) followed by a major show at Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1996). Baselitz's Remix cycle was first presented at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2006), and the Albertina, Vienna (2007), the same year as his retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2007). A comprehensive survey of Baselitz's sculptures was held at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2011 - 2012), followed by solo exhibitions at the Albertina, Vienna (2013), and Haus der Kunst, Munich (2014). Baselitz's Heldenbilder (Hero Paintings) and Neue Typen (New Types) were shown at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt (2016), travelling to the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; and Guggenheim Bilbao. In 2018, comprehensive solo exhibitions were held at the Fondation Beyeler, Basel; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; and Musée Unterlinden, Colmar, France. Most recently, important solo exhibitions of his work have been presented at Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, Italy (2019), Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2021-22), Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Venice, Italy (2021-22) and The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (2022). In 2023, exhibitions of Baselitz's work can be seen at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany, the Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria and Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna, Austria. Baselitz currently lives and works between three different locations: Lake Ammersee in Bavaria, Salzburg, Austria and Imperia in Liguria, Italy. His works can be found in institutional collections around the world.