Sidney Altman
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About the Georg Baselitz
Georg Baselitzis a German painter, sculptor and graphic artist. In the 1960s he became well known for his figurative, expressive paintings. In 1969 he began painting his subjects upside down in an effort to overcome the representational, content-driven character of his earlier work and stress the artifice of painting. Drawing from myriad influences, including art of Soviet era illustration art, the Mannerist period and African sculptures, he developed his own, distinct artistic language.
He was born as Hans-Georg Kern in Deutschbaselitz, Upper Lusatia, Germany. He grew up amongst the suffering and demolition of World War II, and the concept of destruction plays a significant role in his life and work. These biographical circumstances are recurring aspects of his entire oeuvre. In this context, the artist stated in an interview: “I was born into a destroyed order, a destroyed landscape, a destroyed people, a destroyed society. And I didn’t want to reestablish an order: I had seen enough of so-called order. I was forced to question everything, to be ‘naive’, to start again.” By disrupting any given orders and breaking the common conventions of perception, Baselitz has formed his personal circumstances into his guiding artistic principles. To this day, he still inverts all his paintings, which has become the unique and most defining feature of his work.
Frequently Asked Questions
{mb_by_number_of_quotes} Quotes by Georg Baselitz
- 1.
I don’t like things that can be reproduced. Wood isn’t important in itself but rather in the fact that objects made in it are unique, simple, unpretentious.
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- 2.
I always feel attacked when I’m asked about my painting.
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- 3.
I had always loved expressionist painting, like every European. In fact I admired it all the more because these were precisely the paintings despised by my father’s generation.
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- 4.
I always work out of uncertainty but when a painting’s finished it becomes a fixed idea, apparently a final statement. In time though, uncertainty returns… your thought process goes on.
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- 5.
Unlike the expressionists, I have never been interested in renewing the world through the vehicle of art.
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- 6.
The artist is not responsible to any one. His social role is asocial… his only responsibility consists in an attitude to the work he does.
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- 7.
I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to work out why this happens.
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