Georg Baselitz X-ray lila, 2020

In X-ray lila (2020), Georg Baselitz takes inspiration from Otto Dix’s renowned portrait of his elderly parents sitting beside each other on a tattered sofa (The Artist’s Parents II, 1924). A double portrait of himself and his wife Elke, this painting also alludes to their earliest portrait Bedroom (1975), which Baselitz reinterprets using recent Polaroids of themselves, positioned similarly to Dix’s parents. This painting was made using a ‘contact-printing’ technique recently developed by the artist. The visible silhouettes are the result of the imprint left by the paint when two canvases are pressed against one another to create a floating image of the couple, thinly grounded by the outline of a sofa.