Georg Baselitz Durchgehend geöffnet, 2021

Georg Baselitz (b. 1938, Saxony, Germany) has been painting upside down since 1969, a format that he developed as a way to empty form of its content. This strategy allows him to navigate between abstraction and figuration, and to revolutionise a medium that is often regarded as irredeemably conventional. In Durchgehend geöffnet (Always Open, 2021), which was painted in the artist’s new studio in Austria, his wife Elke is silhouetted in purple against a mysterious dark background, seated on a chair which is rendered in just a few bare-bones lines. When painting Elke, the inversion of the composition also serves to disrupt any harmony or beauty that is likely to seep into the portrayal of a figure so beloved by the artist. This creates a defamiliarising effect, without undermining the artist’s expressivity as he traces his particular path through the difficulties of representation in portraiture.