Georg Baselitz
(Born 1938)
Georg Baselitz was born in Deutschbaselitz, Germany, in 1938. He attended the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in East Berlin in 1956 and the West Berlin school from 1958 – 1962. In 1965 Baselitz was awarded a scholarship for a year’s residential study at the Villa Romana in Florence. Very early in his career, Baselitz emerged as a pioneer of German Neo-Expressionism, rebelling against the dominance of abstract painting and proposing in its place a personal, expressive figurative art rooted in the art brut movement. In his early works, he concentrated on several figure types, including heroes, rebels, and shepherds. From 1969, Baselitz painted his subjects upside down. He adopted this method to stress the artifice of painting. The artist is also well known for his sculpture and printmaking. Drawing from a myriad of influences, including art of the Mannerist period, African sculptures, and Soviet era illustration art, Baselitz developed his own, distinct artistic language.
Baselitz’s work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. Major retrospectives of his work have been held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1983; traveled to Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and Kunsthalle Basel); Centre Pompidou, Paris (1993); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1995; traveled to Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, and Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1996 and 2011); and Royal Academy of Arts, London (2007). Baselitz has represented Germany at the Venice Biennale (1980) and participated in Documenta 5 and 7 in Kassel, Germany (1972 and 1982). Georg Baselitz lives and works in Basel (Switzerland), at the Ammersee (Bavaria, Germany) and in Imperia (Italian Riviera).
