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—depict schoolchildren standing before a banner emblazoned with the Nazi slogan Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer (One People, One Empire, One Leader) that was hung on the outside of the school building on occasions such as Adolf Hitler’s birthday. This final allusion to Baselitz’s roots, which echoes the idea of an artistic ‘school,’ brings his creative life full circle. In the other paintings on view, the artist renders simple, inverted images of himself and his wife, Elke, in fine, ink-like black lines on lush golden grounds, adding, in the artist’s words, “a misplaced Willem de Kooning” to each composition in the form 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 they are is a provisional line drawn between past and present, with something added!” The paintings are also 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.