Georg Baselitz, German Neo-Expressionist Painter, Dies at 88

By William Grimes

Georg Baselitz, a German painter in the vanguard of the Neo-Expressionist movement that took the art world by storm in the 1980s, died on Thursday. He was 88.

Thaddaeus Ropac, one of the galleries that represented him, announced the death in a news release, but provided no other details.

Mr. Baselitz, along with German contemporaries like A.R. Penck and Anselm Kiefer, mounted a frontal attack on Minimalism and Conceptualism, the dominant “cool” styles of the 1970s. In contrast to the refined intellectualism and impersonal aesthetic of artists like Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd, he offered an art that reveled in raw emotion, extroverted brushwork and a fierce engagement with the complexities of 20th-century German history.

Well-known in his native country since the 1960s, Mr. Baselitz catapulted to fame in the early 1980s as curators and dealers began promoting the work of like-minded painters in several countries, notably Julian Schnabel in the United States and the Italians Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi, who fostered a powerful international movement.