BERLIN — Georg Baselitz, the influential German Neo-Expressionist painter celebrated for his controversial inverted artworks, passed away Thursday at the age of 88.
The Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, which served as Baselitz’s representative, confirmed the artist’s death through a family statement on Thursday. While the gallery noted he died “peacefully,” no specific cause of death was provided.
Originally named Hans-Georg Kern, the artist adopted his professional name from Deutschbaselitz, the eastern Saxony village where he was born on January 23, 1938, during Nazi Germany’s rule before World War II began. Following his childhood amid wartime devastation, he fled East Germany in 1957 during a period of mounting political tensions and relocated to West Germany.
“I was born into a destroyed order, into a destroyed landscape, into a destroyed people, into a destroyed society,” he reflected to the German news agency dpa prior to reaching his 85th birthday.
The gallery described him as “a titan of contemporary painting, sculpture, drawing and printmaking” and “one of the most important artists of our time,” crediting him with influencing both fellow artists and the global art community.
His debut exhibition in 1963 sparked significant controversy when authorities identified pornographic content in two of his works, leading to their confiscation by a vice squad.
Critics frequently labeled him an “artist of rage,” and he embraced a philosophy of “contradiction,” according to dpa reporting.
Museums worldwide display his creations, and his pieces have sold for millions at international auctions. German authorities announced in 2017 that they had retrieved 15 stolen Baselitz paintings and drawings valued at approximately 2.5 million euros ($2.9 million).
Baselitz remembered gaining early recognition during the 1960s through his golden-hued “Hero” painting series, inspired by fictional characters from Russian civil war literature. These works showed damaged figures stumbling toward viewers in tattered military clothing, featuring distorted proportions with oversized hands and undersized heads. His war-torn hero piece, “Der Hirte (The Shepherd)” from 1966, earned worldwide recognition.
In 1969, Baselitz produced “Der Wald auf dem Kopf” (The Forest on its Head), marking his first “inverted” artwork that displayed trees in an upside-down orientation, establishing what would become his signature style.
“Georg Baselitz did not just turn his paintings upside down; he also turned our thinking routines upside down,” stated German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. “Having experienced the destruction and suffering of the Second World War as a child, the collapse of all order forced him to question everything around him.”
In a recent video interview, Baselitz reflected on his lengthy artistic journey, noting that “typical painting has never appealed to me.”
“I actually wanted to be more of a black-and-white painter, and above all, I didn’t want to work spatially, perspectively, with shadows and light and such things that arise with the imitation of nature,” he explained while sitting in a wheelchair wearing a paint-stained jacket.
“I must say that throughout my life, I was not aware that I was a painter of color, even though I am constantly told that I have such wonderful colors,” Baselitz remarked.
The artist explained his goal to “construct my connection to the world, to myself and to my wife,” utilizing the most “simple and ordinary” methods available. His comments came from a video recorded at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice, which currently features an exhibition of Baselitz’s “Golden Heroes” collection running from May 6 through September 27.
A “Naked Masters” exhibition at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum in 2023 showcased five decades of his work, exploring provocative nudity themes featuring the artist and his wife, Elke, displayed alongside classical oil paintings by old masters that similarly depicted nude subjects.
He leaves behind his wife and two sons, Daniel Blau and Anton Kern, according to the gallery.
