Georg Baselitz for the Vienna Opera Ball

The Vienna State Opera asked Georg Baselitz to create a work for this year's 65th Vienna Opera Ball poster. The work by the German-Austrian artist is now being offered for auction at the Dorotheum and the proceeds of the auction will go to the initiative ‘Österreich hilft Österreich’ (Austria helps Austria). 

The work ‘Wienmusik’ with its collaged leg stencils on an iconic golden ground, is a characteristic reference to a specific concept, just as it is open to a variety of associations:

One of Georg Baselitz’s most important and earliest motifs is the foot or leg. As early as the beginning of the 1960s, while painting Die große Nacht im Eimer, Baselitz conceived a series of paintings that all show deformed feet: P. D. Feet (1960-63). Baselitz was referencing Théodore Géricault's study of feet and hands from the first half of the 19th century at the time. Edvard Munch’s feet in the series Ekely and Spaziergang ohne Stock (2004/5), the boots of the Karl-May-Cowboys created in the early 2000s and the high heels of the more recent monumental wood and bronze sculptures also bear witness to Baselitz's fascination with this motif. Dancing feet and legs can also be found repeatedly in Baselitz's work: for example in his 2015 series Ma grigio - a reference to Frida Kahlo - and in 2009 in his work Ceci n'est pas un tango, which refers to Andy Warhol's Dance Diagrams.