GEORG BASELITZ

Early Years

Born Hans-Georg Kern in 1938 in the village of Deutschbaselitz, Saxony, Georg Baselitz grew up in East Germany during the aftermath of World War II. His early life was shaped by the trauma of war and authoritarian rule, themes that would later manifest in his art.

In 1956, Baselitz began his formal art training at the Academy of Fine and Applied Art in East Berlin but was expelled for ‘political immaturity’ after producing work that defied the strict socialist realist doctrine imposed by the East German regime. He soon moved to West Berlin, enrolling at the Hochschule der Künste, where he immersed himself in Expressionism, Art Brut, and the work of the Old Masters. In 1961, he adopted the name ‘Baselitz’ after his birthplace, severing ties with his given name and signalling a reinvention of his identity as an artist.

Artworks

Georg Baselitz’s art is defined by its bold inversion of form, expressive brushwork and unflinching confrontation of historical memory. His iconic upside-down paintings, first introduced in 1969, proposed a new visual grammar for painting influencing the trajectory of contemporary art.

Early Paintings: Disruption and the Figure

In the early 1960s, Baselitz forged a radical path with paintings that challenged abstraction and rejected the constraints of socialist realism. His Pandemonium series, made in collaboration with Eugen Schönebeck, used grotesque imagery and expressionist distortion to confront the moral collapse of post-war society. In The Big Night Down the Drain (1962–63), a crude figure performs an unsettling act of self-exposure, drawing censorship and scandal. His acclaimed The Heroes series (1965–66), including works like Rebel and The Great Friends, depicts battered, oversized male figures stumbling through desolate landscapes—representations of a broken national psyche. These emotionally charged artworks mark Baselitz’s formative contribution to figurative painting, combining raw visual energy with cultural critique.

Inversion as Language

In 1969, Baselitz made a pivotal conceptual shift: he began turning his subjects upside-down. This technique—first seen in The Wood On Its Head (1969)—was a deliberate break from narrative painting, designed to foreground the material and compositional aspects of his artworks. Inverted imagery, such as Nude Elke (1976) and Mrs Baselitz in Orange (1976), complicates perception and asks the viewer to engage more deeply with brushwork, texture, and surface. This approach allowed Baselitz to explore form free of storytelling constraints, transforming how artists and audiences engage with representation. Over time, inversion became his signature language, allowing him to revisit traditional subjects like portraiture and landscape while simultaneously critiquing art historical canons. Baselitz’s inverted paintings continue to shape his output today, reflecting a sustained interest in destabilising visual norms within contemporary art.

Sculpture and Carving Identity

In the late 1970s, Baselitz shifted his attention to sculpture, applying his disruptive sensibility to three-dimensional form. Using chainsaws and axes, he carved large wooden figures that rejected finesse in favour of direct, forceful expression. His controversial Model for a Sculpture (1979), presented at the German Pavilion at the 1980 Venice Biennale, features a roughly carved figure with an upraised arm, sparking debate about the artist’s engagement with national symbolism. Baselitz’s sculptures—such as Dresdner Frauen – Die Elbe (1990), a tribute to wartime survivors, and Louise Fuller (2014), a towering bronze dancer—draw on German folk art and non-Western carving traditions. These works amplify his long-standing interest in identity, memory and the body, extending his painting practice into physical space. Rough-hewn and often monumental, his sculptures underscore his belief in the primacy of gesture, material, and the artist’s hand in the making of contemporary art.

Public Commissions

Include:

• Zero Dom (2015), a monumental sculpture installed at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt
• Volksmund (2011), bronze figures placed outside the German Bundestag in Berlin

Awards and Accolades

Include:

• Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, Venice Biennale (2022)
• Officer of the French Legion of Honour (2012)
• Praemium Imperiale for Painting, Japan Art Association (2004)
• Honorary Professorship the Royal Academy of Arts, London (1999)

Exhibitions

Georg Baselitz has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions at important institutions. A selection of important exhibitions are provided below.

Solo Exhibitions

• Georg Baselitz: Late Work, Kunsthaus, Zurich, Switzerland (2023)
• Georg Baselitz: Sculptures 2011–2015, Serpentine Galleries, London (2023)
• Baselitz – The retrospective, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2021)
• Baselitz Academy, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice (2019)
• Baselitz / Six Decades, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2018)
• Back Then, In Between and Today, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2014)

Group Exhibitions

• Balance, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2022)
• German Art After 1960: The Fisher Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2016)
• Postwar: Art between the Pacific and the Atlantic 1945 – 1985, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2016)
• Bad Thoughts, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2014)
• Exquisite Corpses: Drawing and Disfiguration, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012)

Critical Reception

Georg Baselitz’s art has been widely discussed in leading publications, including ARTnews, Artnet News, and The Financial Times.

Georg Baselitz FAQs

Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2025