Georg Baselitz: Zeit für neue Helden Solo exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Schloss Derneburg

Kunstmuseum Schloss Derneburg is pleased to announce the exhibition, Georg Baselitz: Time for New Heroes, opening on 16 May 2026. Conceived as a revolving presentation of prints by the acclaimed German artist, this initial exhibition includes approximately seventy woodcuts and etchings created between 1964 and 2008 supplemented by examples in painting and drawing. Beginning with core motifs found in Baselitz's solitary New Types and Hero-figures of the 1960s and masterfully refined in print across six decades, Time for New Heroes exemplifies the breadth of his innovation in technique, scale, and color. On the occasion of this exhibition, Kunstmuseum Schloss Derneburg will re-open the lower level of the so-called "New Studio," where Baselitz produced prints for a decade, complementing the ongoing exhibition Baselitz in the Studio installed in the building's main level.

 In an interview with Ulrich Weisner conducted in Derneburg on 22 August 1989, Baselitz recalled "I always made woodcuts right when the urgent need arose to refine an image, an idea of an image, that I had developed and that was manifested in paintings - to precisely refine that image's idea into a final form." Though initially heralded as a painter, Baselitz maintained an unusual commitment to developing form fluidly between painting, drawing, sculpture and printmaking, melding the processes and challenges inherent to each medium as a way of informing his overall practice. By pursuing the historically rich, perennially outdated, and technically difficult craft of etchings and woodcuts, Baselitz has positioned himself as a prolific contemporary outsider within a historical lineage that includes Albrecht Dürer, Pontormo, the School of Fontainebleau, and Edvard Munch. With each exercise and with each innovation, Baselitz illustrates a lifelong fidelity to printmaking and a Sisyphean commitment towards an elusive 'final form.'