Active since the early 1960s, Georg Baselitz work has always been provocative and diverse. His early pieces, such as The Big Night Down the Drain and the Heroes series, which depict vulnerable and distorted human figures in chaotic landscapes, set the tone for his career. The Heroes series is particularly significant as it reflects a critical view of society and the human condition after World War II, portraying broken figures that are both heroic and suffering, a recurring theme in Baselitz’s work.
Georg Baselitz is renowned for his revolutionary approach of painting motifs upside down, a technique he introduced in the late 1960s to challenge traditional artistic conventions. With his Fracture Paintings, Baselitz began breaking apart the pictorial space, leading to his iconic inversion of trees, portraits, and eagles, which freed his art to focus on conceptual color schemes and unexpected themes like The Orange Eaters or reflections on Soviet propaganda. In recent years, the depictions of himself; sometimes alongside his wife, Elke – are influenced by the broader human experience of the body and its ephemeral nature.
In addition to painting, Baselitz is a master of drawing, woodcut, and etching. From the 1980s, he added sculpture to his practice, creating raw wooden figures carved with axes and chainsaws, and later expanding into bronze works in the 2000s. Baselitz has exhibited extensively, with his most recent solo shows including: Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany (2023); Albertina, Vienna (2023) and The Morgan Library & Museum, New York (2022); Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (2023); Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Venice (2022); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2021); Fondation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2018); Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2018).
