Overview
Georg Baselitz, born in Deutschbaselitz, Germany, in 1938, has spent over six decades confronting the fractured identity of post-war Germany through a body of work that is visceral, unflinching, and deeply personal. Born in 1938 in Saxony, in what would become East Germany, his early life was marked by the trauma and dislocation of war – experiences that have remained central to his practice.
A key figure in the Neo-Expressionist movement, Baselitz is known for turning his subjects upside down – a formal strategy that disrupts narrative and forces a different kind of looking. Across painting, sculpture, drawing and printmaking, his work resists ease or resolution. Figures are often distorted, fragmented, as if caught between collapse and reconstruction. The physicality of his mark-making speaks to a need not only to represent, but to wrestle with the image. Baselitz continues to explore memory, history and identity with a force that refuses to diminish. His work does not seek to soothe, but to speak plainly about rupture – personal, national, and artistic.
Baselitz’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; Fondation Beyeler, Basel; Städel Museum, Frankfurt; Guggenheim Bilbao; Tate Modern; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Victoria and Albert Museum; Kunsthalle Baden-Baden; the Royal Academy of Arts, London; and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek.