https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/hirshhorn-beyeler-georg-baselitz-survey-2018-1159748
Georg Baselitz will get a US-Swiss retrospective next year co-organized by the Hirshhorn in Washington, DC, and Fondation Beyeler, near Basel. The show is set to kick off at the private museum in Switzerland on January 21—two days before the German artist turns 80.
His survey will feature more than 100 works from every period in his six-decade-long career, including paintings, such as his upside down German eagle, Fingermalerei – Adler (1972), sculptures, and works on paper, as well as new works. “He is a great painter who has been consistently good over the years,” Stéphane Aquin, the chief curator of the Hirshhorn, who is co-curator of the show, tells artnet News. He adds that the artist is enjoying an “exuberant and explosive” late period of creativity.
Aquin reveals that among Baselitz’s latest work due to go on show are a series of “Heads,” partly inspired by portraits by the German 19th-century artist Ferdinand von Rayski (1806–1890). These relate back to one of Baselitz’s earliest series, “Rayski-Head.” There will be a Rayski painting from 1959 and one from 2017, Aquin says.
The last big Baselitz show in a public US institution was two decades ago. Organized by the Guggenheim, it then toured to the Hirshhorn. Next year’s exhibition, which runs until April 29 at Fondation Beyeler and opens at the Hirshhorn on June 21 (until September 16), will include one of the artist’s most celebrated—and, in the early 1960s, controversial—paintings, The Naked Man. Painted in 1962, it was seized by the German authorities as obscene because of the figure’s long penis, which stands and salutes.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/feb/14/georg-baselitz-interview
Baselitz had married Elke Kretzschmar in 1962 and they have two sons. He says that throughout most of the 60s "the chances for an artist, let alone an artist like me, to impose yourself and to make a living from your art was nil". But during this period his art made remarkable progress. Rejecting the orthodoxy of what was called tachism – the European version of abstract expressionism – he not only introduced figures into his work, but began to use specific German archetypes, motifs and folklore. But Baselitz's shepherds, woodsmen, hunters and so on were not conventionally heroic – although the paintings would later be called the Helden (heroes) series. Rather they were bedraggled, broken and shambolic figures rendered in messily desolate landscapes.
"In hindsight I think those pictures are complete pieces of art. But at the time it felt very chaotic and mixed up. I thought 'this can't be all' and I had to come up with new ideas." He set out on a series of strategies to disrupt both the work, and his making of the work. He painted with the canvas on the floor. (The floor of his studio closely resembles Jackson Pollock's on Long Island, with the difference that Baselitz doesn't insist that you wear protective shoes.) Then he started to "fracture" paintings into sections, with obvious echoes of a divided Germany, before he adopted the technique for which he is best known today, painting his motifs upside down – which directs both his, and the viewers, attention to the abstract aspects of the figurative work. He began to use his hands instead of brushes and when he moved to sculpting in wood he opted for the crude attack of the chainsaw over the precision chisel.
http://blog.staedelmuseum.de/baselitz-hinterfragt-unser-helden-bild/
Only years after its creation, Baselitz's central cycle of images received its powerful title: "The Heroes" or "New Types". In 1965/66, in a very short time, the young artist created around 60 paintings and 130 drawings of different versions of the same motif. The human figure, pictorially represented in powerful brush strokes, stood in the center of this intense creative period.
Even Baselitz himself had from the beginning of some of his paintings and drawings titled "The hero" or "The new type". The bodies of these "heroes" dominate the composition, but a powerful, heroic appearance looks different. Shown are no power-hungry, brave-looking women and men. Instead: disfigured figures with torn clothes and unsteady stance. Staggering - often half-naked and with bared genitals - they move through the picture spaces, blood dripping from open wounds. Baselitz tells us no story, and certainly no hero story. Rather, the figures seem lost, detached from the event, to stand in only rudimentary (tangible) landscapes.
WHAT IS A HERO?
But what do we mean by a heroine, a hero? A brave person who has distinguished himself through special talents or convictions, which uses cunning and action for something greater, a common good. Greek and Roman mythology is full of such heroes, think of Hercules or Odysseus alone. But also Christianity knows them, figures like Jaenne d'Arc, who stand up for their faith - and pay with their lives. The list can be continued indefinitely, into history, literature, but also into our time, towards popular cinema, comics or sports.
Heroes and always our ideas of them are always influenced by the social, political and religious conditions - and the associated values. They are figures whose actions are evaluated, even years after their real or fictitious, traditional or supposed existence. Especially because of their generational influence, they are sometimes considered critical again at a later date, their status and public image questioned. For example, today we no longer find reasons to recognize the (war) heroes of the Nazi era as such. They were charged and sentenced as war criminals and murderers.
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UPHEAVALS CREATE NEW HEROES
Baselitz's heroes emerged at a time when the memory of those very war heroes was still present . In Germany, the work-up of one's own past, contrary to numerous resistance, had just begun. In 1963, the first Auschwitz trial was opened in Frankfurt am Main. In the same year, the Federal Agency for Civic Education received its name, which remains so today. Not only were the leaders of the National Socialist regime accused, but also the societal links and responsibilities were publicly discussed for the first time.
Baselitz, born 1938 near Dresden, had witnessed National Socialism and war, but also post-war period, reconstruction and economic miracle. The political and social upheavals also brought with them a change in the values and valuations of their heroes. The brave, victorious soldier of the National Socialist world view was replaced in the GDR by the "hero of the work", and replaced in the FRG by the Hollywood "heroes". In his pictures, Baselitz approaches neither the one nor the other (even though his "types" of the government-wanted typing in the GDR are probably closer than the propagated individualism of the Federal Republic).
The paintings and drawings by Georg Baselitz do not depict any unassailable, entranced figures at the moment of their heroic deed. Instead, they are broken, questioning heroes - exposed to our (subsequent) criticism. But also the observer stands, uncertain of their presence, in front of them. It is a struggle of both - educated as well as observing - attitude.
Georg Baselitz (born 23 January 1938, as Hans-Georg Kern, in Deutschbaselitz, Germany) is a German painter, sculptor and graphic artist. In the 1960s he became well known for his figurative, expressive paintings. In 1969 he began painting his subjects upside down in an effort to overcome the representational, content-driven character of his earlier work and stress the artifice of painting. Drawing from a myriad of influences, including art of Soviet era illustration art, the Mannerist period and African sculptures, he developed his own, distinct artistic language.
Since Baselitz grew up amongst the suffering and demolition of World War II, the concept of destruction plays a significant role in his life and work. These autobiographical circumstances have therefore returned throughout his whole oeuvre. In this context, the artist stated in an interview: "I was born into a destroyed order, a destroyed landscape, a destroyed people, a destroyed society. And I didn't want to reestablish an order: I had seen enough of so-called order. I was forced to question everything, to be 'naive', to start again." By disrupting any given orders and breaking the common conventions of perception, Baselitz has formed his personal circumstances into his guiding artistic principles. To this day, he still inverts all his paintings, which has become his unique and most defining feature in his work.
Please look at my other items including rare modern and contemporary art and design pieces. Thank you.