At the time i had not seen that many Modern Art works, the first time i encountered the works by Baselitz i thought of them as stupid, a gimmick, but seeing more of them ..specially the very large onses , i altered my opinion and now i find them impressive and monumental. This proces took some 30 years, but i honestly can say that for me, Baselitz is one of the greatest living artists.
Georg Baselitz, born Hans-Georg Kern in Deutschland near Dresden in 1938, now lives and works between Basel (Switzerland), the Ammersee (Bavaria) and Imperia (Liguria). He has been an influence on international art since 1960, his works developing in the arena of the reception of German expressionism on the one hand, and the lightness of American painting (Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning) on the other. His Helden [heroes] group, finger-paintings, fracture and Russian paintings, which focus on his German past are represented in almost all distinguished museum collections. From the late 1960s, Baselitz demonstrated his premiss of visual insight taking priority over the subject by deliberately showing his works upside down. The result is a unique simultaneity of figuration and abstraction. This urge towards permanent variation and change is also evident in his late work. Since 2006 he has produced so-called remix paintings in which, with an unprecedented lightness of touch, he re-examines the iconography of his own historical works. Many Baselitz titles can be found at www.ftn-books.com including the facsimile reprint of the famous Malelade artist book.
