| Baselitz, Georg (1938- ) , German artist, whose expressionistic paintings of the human figure had a crucial influence on the new generation of figurative artists, known as neoexpressionists, who became prominent in Germany and other Western countries in the early 1980s. Baselitz was born Hans-Georg Kern in Deutschbaselitz, Saxony, in what would soon become East Germany. He adopted the name Baselitz in 1956, when he moved to what was at that time West Berlin following his expulsion from the Kunstakademie (Academy of Art) in East Berlin. From 1957 to 1964 he attended the Academy of the Arts in West Berlin, where he studied under German abstract artist Hann Trier. Together with German painter Eugen Schönebeck, Baselitz had exhibitions in 1961 and 1962 in West Berlin, for which he and Schönebeck published posters referred to as the Pandämonium Manifestos, consisting of poetic written texts coupled with drawings by both artists. Baselitz's work is influenced by an earlier generation of German expressionist painters as well as by the 1950s American movement of abstract expressionism. His work is characterized by a raw emotional quality and by thick layers of crudely applied paint, and it often contains explicit sexual imagery, especially his earliest pieces. In 1965 Baselitz was awarded a fellowship to live and paint in Florence, Italy, for six months. There he painted a series of monumental figures entitled Heroes, followed by two similar series, Rebels and Shepherds. In 1969 he began to depict his subjects upside down—a technique that, he felt, freed the viewer's imagination and emphasized the abstract qualities of the composition. Ironically, he utilized only the most traditional representational subjects: nudes, portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and history paintings (paintings which involve historical themes). He continued to produce upside-down figures in the following decades, as in Red Nose (1987, Städtisches Kunstmuseum, Bonn, Germany), a female nude painted in a characteristically expressive, painterly style. Baselitz was also renowned for some remarkable prints as well as for ambitious sculptures in wood, each one a figure carved from a single tree. |
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