Hans Werner Holzwarth - Georg Baselitz - 2025

The world seen upside down

The paintings and sculptures of Georg Baselitz

Known for the audaciously simple but game-changing strategy of painting the motif on its head, Georg Baselitz has been a consistently challenging artist since the start of the 1960s. His work is always highly charged but surprisingly diverse, beginning with the raw, existential male figures famously removed from his first solo exhibition for indecency, and the series of “Heroes” that portrayed disabled and exposed figures in a destroyed landscape. During this development, the picture space became more and more fractured, and by the end of the decade the artist fully turned the world upside down: trees, factories, eagles, or nude self-portraits actually painted on their heads. This soon allowed him to freely paint and to engage with conceptual color schemes or off-beat themes, such as men eating oranges, Soviet propaganda paintings, or more recently so-called remixes in a reengagement with his own earlier work as a dialogue in time. Already a master of drawing, woodcut, and engraving, from 1980 on Baselitz also created rough sculptures hewn from wood with axe and chainsaw, then adding bronze to his materials in the late 2000s.

Now available in an updated unlimited edition, this book features large-format reproductions of more than 400 works in all media plus installation views and portrait shots. Texts approach the subject from different perspectives: there is a portrait of Baselitz and his dark sense of humor by long-time connoisseur Richard Shiff, an essay on the formation of his art and development as a painter by critic Jonathan Jones, on the sculptural work since his scandalous success at the Venice Biennale 1980 by art historian Eva Mongi-Vollmer, on his artistic strategies by art historian Carla Schulz-Hoffmann, a collection of literary vignettes relating to the artist’s use of myth and history by author and director Alexander Kluge, and a studio conversation with art journalist Cornelius Tittel. Statements from the artist and an illustrated biography complete this unprecedented exploration of Georg Baselitz’s work.