German artist Georg Baselitz dies aged 88 Prominent visual artist explored range of techniques across six decades of work
By Philip Olterman
The German artist Georg Baselitz, whose expressive paintings and sculptures stirred controversy before winning him global acclaim and the admiration of politicians in high office, has died aged 88.
The Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, which had a longstanding professional relationship with the artist, confirmed his death on Thursday. It said Baselitz had “defined German visual art for a generation” and had died peacefully.
Baselitz, born Hans-Georg Kern, was among Germany’s most prominent contemporary visual artists, with a body of work stretching over six decades and across a range of techniques.
Like those of his peers Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer, Baselitz’s works grappled with the traumas of German history and questions of collective guilt.
He told Der Spiegel in 2013: “All German painters have neuroses when it comes to Germany’s past, be it war, especially the aftermath of war, or the GDR [the socialist German Democratic Republic]. All that weighed on me in the form of a strong bout of depression, and with strong force. If you want, my paintings are battles.”
In 1969 he began painting canvases upside down and inverting motifs, a technique he said sought to find a way between abstraction and straightforward figurative art.
