Georg Baselitz, the pre-eminent German painter who redefined postwar art through his signature upside-down compositions and raw Neo-Expressionism, has died aged 88, per artnews.com.
His death was confirmed on April 30 by the Thaddaeus Ropac gallery.
Baselitz rose to prominence in the 1960s, famously rejecting the prevailing trends of Minimalism and Conceptualism in favour of a gritty, figurative style that captured the trauma of his home nation.
Born Hans-Georg Bruno Kern in 1938 in what became East Germany, the artist adopted the name Baselitz in 1961 after moving to West Berlin. His early career was marked by rebellion; he was expelled from art school in 1957 for “sociopolitical immaturity” before finding inspiration in American Abstract Expressionism. Despite the global shift toward abstraction, Baselitz made the “existential decision” to remain a figurative painter, viewing himself as a permanent outsider.
His 1963 debut solo exhibition in Berlin sparked a public scandal, with works seized by authorities for being “disturbing.” By the late 1960s, he developed his most famous technique, flipping his subjects vertically. Works such as The Wood on Its Head (1969) allowed him to focus on the formal qualities of painting while stripping the subject of its traditional meaning, a move that cemented his status as a technical innovator.
In the 1980s, Baselitz became a leading figure of the Neo-Expressionist movement, alongside contemporaries such as Anselm Kiefer. His work often grappled with the “wounded landscapes” of Germany’s past and the omnipresence of decay. His global reputation grew through major exhibitions at the Venice Biennale and prominent institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Centre Pompidou.
However, Baselitz’s legacy was complicated by controversial public statements. In 2013 and 2015, he drew widespread condemnation for claiming that “women don’t paint very well” and suggesting that their historical absence from the top of the art market was due to a lack of ambition rather than structural bias. He also faced criticism during the Covid-19 pandemic for dismissing government health measures.
Despite these controversies, Baselitz remained a formidable force in the art world until his death. His career was defined by a refusal to “reflect into the distance,” focusing instead on a visceral, melancholic realism rooted in the destruction he witnessed as a child. He is survived by his son, Anton Kern.
Baselitz is widely credited with reviving German figurative painting at a time when the medium was considered secondary to conceptual art. His “Heroes” series remains a seminal exploration of German identity and masculinity in the wake of the Second World War.
•Featured image: Georg Baselitz in 1964/ Czechatz/Ullstein Bild via Getty Images
