GEORG BASELITZ

Two paintings from the series Meine Schule carry echoes of Baselitz’s earliest memory, from the 1940s, of the schoolhouse in Deutschbaselitz, Germany, where his father was a teacher and where the family lived during the war. Meine Schule, die Jungs (My School, the Boys) and Meine Schule, die Mädchen (My School, the Girls) (both 2026)—neither of which has been previously exhibited—depictschoolchildren standing before a banner emblazoned with the Nazi slogan Ein Volk, Ein Reich, EinFührer (One People, One Empire, One Leader) that was hung on the outside of the school building onoccasions such as Adolf Hitler’s birthday. This final allusion to Baselitz’s roots, which echoes the ideaof an artistic ‘school,’ brings his creative life full circle. In the other paintings on view, the artist renderssimple, inverted images of himself and his wife, Elke, in fine, ink-like black lines on lush goldengrounds, adding, in the artist’s words, “a misplaced Willem de Kooning” to each composition in theform of a cluster of colorful impasto brushstrokes.

“These pictures are not literary, not stories, they are not political, not doctrinaire, not ideological,they are not idiotic statements or whatever,” Baselitz declared with characteristic brio. “What theyare is a provisional line drawn between past and present, with something added!” The paintings arealso closely related to those exhibited in Eroi d’Oro at Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice (May 6–September 27, 2026), which Baselitz characterized as a summation of his artistic activity.

Strawinsky, the last sculpture that Baselitz arranged to be completed, is a large, seated figure inbronze with a white patina. Its form is derived from the artist’s marionette and set designs for a 2025production of Igor Stravinsky’s Faustian melodrama Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) at theSalzburger Marionettentheater, Austria. Baselitz rendered his designs in cardboard and foil, adoptinga stark, expressive style that resonates with the protagonist’s antiheroic status. In Strawinsky, thefigure’s sturdy trunk—the sculpture’s primary components were cast from carved wood—stands uprightwhile its head and limbs appear in a state of collapse, reflecting the character’s eventual demise. Thework also recalls Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s poignant sculpture Seated Youth (1917) in the collection of theNational Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Another monumental bronze figure, 1965, has the same highly tactile finish as Strawinsky but a darkcoloration. It refers to A. R. Penck’s painting Ohne Titel (Freundesgruppe) (Untitled [Group of Friends],1964–65), in which the artist portrays himself and Baselitz—it is this figure specifically to which thesculpture alludes—alongside filmmaker Jürgen Böttcher and dissident singer-songwriter and poetWolf Biermann.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue featuring a text by the artist; an essay on Baselitz’s early years by Richard Calvocoressi; a text on the artist’s golden paintings by poet and scholar Rod Mengham; an essay on the final sculpture by art historian, writer, and curator Sergio Risaliti; and an elegy by curator and art historian Sir Norman Rosenthal.

An additional tribute to Baselitz by Calvocoressi appears in the Fall 2026 issue of Gagosian Quarterly.