Gagosian Gallery presents new works by Georg Baselitz In his new paintings, Baselitz has revisited provocative aspects of his own history, such as the fractured paintings of 1966, reinterpreting them with the experience of hindsight.
February 28–Saturday, April 7, 2012
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Source: Gagosian Gallery
“I don’t want to create a monster, I want to make something which is new, exceptional, somethingthat only I do…something that references tradition, but is still new“.
—Georg Baselitz
Baselitz’s challenging career is a constant process of counterpoint, marked by intense periods ofcreative activity culminating in a masterpiece or group of master works, followed by a startlingrenewal and rethinking of the subject.
A traditional artisan, he produces paintings, drawings,prints, and wood sculptures, often on a monumental scale. Baselitz has consistently explored whatit is to be German and a German artist, although his oeuvre owes as much to a broader range ofinfluences, including Art brut and the drawings and writings of Antonin Artaud, sixteenth centuryGerman woodcuts, and African sculptures.
For the past decade, he has painted on the studio floor,crawling across the surface of the canvas as he works. While creating a fluid yet drip-free surface,this method denies him a total view while working; rather he must rely on intuition. Vast andrapidly painted, with swathes of bright, gossamer hues and explosive, meandering lines, thesepaintings are radical transubstantiations, part-recollection, part-ghost, of their rather opaque,weightier predecessors. In “Beginging” (2011), and “Ist Franz Pforr in Rom?” (2011), genderless, abjectbodies surge with color and life, washed with swathes of translucent sky blue and orange,contrasting with black and white corollary that fills the other half of the canvas. The impulse toimprove, clarify, and update is clearly evident while, conversely, the haunting, fleeting quality ofthe work reveals a mature artist’s meditations on time, presence, failure, and possibility.
Related content
Georg Baselitz at the Gagosian Gallery, Rome (exhibition, 2008)
Georg Baselitz retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts (exhibition, 2007)
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