"The paintings are securely hung on a hook,
that which hangs down displays gravity. That which is portrayed on
the painting hanging on the wall, particularly if it also is shown
upside down, does not fall off but stands out all the more and becomes
more noticeable."
This major exhibition presents a representative selection
of 130 works of art by one of the most important contemporary Germany
painters.
Upside-down motifs, ‘pictures’,
therefore, ‘that turn your head’, have made his work distinctive
since 1969. Yet Georg Baselitz’s work cannot be reduced to this
alone. This comprehensive exhibition will prove how varied the work
of this artist, born 1938 in Deutschbaselitz/Saxony, has been over
the passed 40 years.
Beginning with his early, rarely seen
‘hero pictures’ from the 1960s, which exhibit relevance
to contemporary history, the exhibition presents his fracture paintings,
his first ‘upside-down’ paintings - which to date have
continued to provide him with painterly and compositional autonomy
- and his finger paintings produced towards the middle of the 1970s.
This is followed by ‘The Orange Eaters’ from the early
1980s, created in reaction to a general re-acceptance of expressive
figurative painting, and by his ‘motif’ paintings, culminating
in his major ‘Malerbild’ and ‘Bildübereins’
paintings - as well as in consecutive ones. On view will be his romantic
works based on Caspar David Friedrich, which have created a furor
since also being installed in the Reichstag in Berlin in 1999. New
works from the years 2002 to 2004 will round off this retrospective.
The show will be augmented by his unrefined
wood sculptures, which do not conceal marks of the wood carving process
under paint. It will present Baselitz as an artist of great craftsmanship,
of concentrated expressiveness and of great diversity with respect
to his portrayal of motifs.
A 50-minute film specially
produced for this exhibition by Heinz Peter Schwerfel will show how
the artist’s former irreconcilable attitude toward his own work
and towards art and painting in general has changed over that past
ten to twelve years.
The film will confront the artist with his early statements and will
present him as a collector of an unusual ensemble, throwing new light
on his own work.
Images
from the exhibition 
