Georg Baselitz Goldhand V, 2024

Thaddaeus Ropac gallery presents a limited jewellery edition by Georg Baselitz. Echoing the artist’s celebrated fire-gilded sculptures, this hand-moulded 18-karat yellow gold pendant seamlessly blends his artistic vision with the exquisite craftsmanship of jewellery artist Otto Jakob, who studied under Baselitz from 1977 to 1980. From the beginning of Baselitz’s career, hands and feet, the primary means by which we connect with the world, have been constant subjects in his canon of motifs. His early paintings of hands and feet contradicted accepted notions of beauty, including the depiction of enlarged limbs in his groundbreaking Heroes series of the 1960s. With greater formal autonomy, the elegance of the elongated bas-relief hands is distanced from bodily associations, ‘representing nothing but themselves,’ according to the artist.