GEORG BASELITZ @ Rupertinum, Museum der Moderne Salzburg

In the early 1960s, the artist made a conscious choice to produce figurative art—a decision that was seen as provocative at a time when abstract art was ascendant. His work not only broke new ground in painting, it also secured his place in art history as an innovator of postwar art. The exhibition at the Rupertinum puts the focus on his early graphic art, in which Baselitz wrestled with German history, identity, and the artistic ego, intertwining classical pictorial traditions with a forceful visual language that was often perceived as raw and disturbing. The presentation’s distinctive thematic organization takes guidance from the four manifestos the artist wrote in the 1960s.