La Jornada: The German artist Georg Baselitz, for whom his paintings were “battles,” has died

From the Editorial

La Jornada Newspaper
Saturday, May 2, 2026, p. 2

One of the last giants of painting, the German artist Georg Baselitz, also a draftsman, engraver and sculptor, died last Thursday at the age of 88, as confirmed by the Ropac gallery, with which he worked for decades.

In a statement, the firm indicated that the creator “profoundly influenced his contemporaries and those who came after him,” and died peacefully. His work developed over more than six decades, a period in which he explored large-scale techniques and formats, with a presence in the international art circuit.

At the end of the 1960s he incorporated the inversion of figures as a constant procedure. In 1969 he made pieces in which the motifs appeared inverted, such as Der Wald auf dem Kopf (The forest upside down).

From then on he applied this resource to characters, trees and buildings, in order to focus attention on the form. This procedure remained one of the most recognizable features of his production over time.

Baselitz developed his work in relation to German Expressionism and post-war American painting, with references to artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

In addition to painting, he produced pieces in drawing, engraving and sculpture. In this last area, he presented large-format wooden figures, including Model for a sculpture, exhibited at the 1980 Venice Biennale.

Throughout his career he participated in exhibitions in several countries, and his production entered public collections. Since the 1980s he established himself as one of the German painters with the greatest projection outside his country, along with artists such as Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer.

He was also part of the so-called German Neo-Expressionism, associated with the return to painting in the post-war European context.

In interviews, the artist addressed the relationship between the creators of his country and the historical past. In 2013 he noted: “all German painters carry a neurosis regarding the German past. That is, the war and, above all, the subsequent period.”

In the same conversation he added: “that plunged me into a deep depression and subjected me to immense pressure. My paintings are, in a way, battles.”

Born Hans Georg Bruno Kern in 1938 in Deutschbaselitz, near Dresden, Saxony, he grew up during Nazism and trained in the former East Germany. In 1961 he adopted the name Georg Baselitz in reference to his place of origin.

Two years later he held his first solo exhibition in West Berlin, which was closed after the press called it “pornographic.” Two of his paintings were confiscated because they were considered explicit, which led to a legal process. In 1965 he presented the series in Florence Heroes, with which he obtained recognition outside his native country.

“In the beginning, while expressionism and pop art provided those wonderful paintings, I made obscenities. Who was going to like that?” he recalled, referring to that early period of his career.

His biography was marked by the post-war context. The son of a school teacher, he lived through the effects of the end of the Third Reich and later training in the socialist system. He was expelled from the East Berlin School of Fine Arts for “social and political immaturity,” after which he moved to West Berlin in the late 1950s.

He taught at institutions such as the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe and the University of the Arts in Berlin. He received recognitions such as the Praemium Imperiale, the Legion of Honor in France and academic distinctions in Europe.

In addition to his production, some of his public statements generated controversy. At times he held positions that provoked reactions in the cultural sphere.

In his final years he resided in Salzburg, Austria, where he continued to work. Regarding his practice, he stated: “the artist would like to have a role, but in reality he is nothing more than a worm. His role is minimal. I have never been interested in transforming society, but rather in proposing a painting that is better than that of the past.”

Baselitz’s work was characterized by the use of large-scale formats and the reiteration of the inverted figure as a visual resource since the late 1960s.

(With information from AFP)