Georg Baselitz German Master of the Inverted Canvas, Passes Away
By Suyoung Sung
[Digest of English translation of the original article in Korean]
Georg Baselitz, a titan of contemporary German art, passed away peacefully on the 30th of last month at the age of 88.
Known to art lovers as the master of the ‘upside-down painting’, Baselitz was born in 1938 in a small village in Saxony. At the age of seven in 1945, he witnessed the profound transformation of Dresden. He later reflected on this formative period: “I was born into a destroyed order, a destroyed landscape, a destroyed people, a destroyed society.” These early experiences guided his lifelong creative journey, leading him to capture the resilience of the human form and the evocative nature of changing landscapes.
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A pivotal example is his Heroes (Heldenbilder) series from 1965–66. These monumental figures, standing amidst landscapes of change with tattered uniforms and contemplative expressions, served as a profound meditation on the European experience. It was as if he were inviting society to acknowledge and reflect upon the shared history they had endured.
In 1969, he arrived at the technique that would become his hallmark: the ‘inversion’. By creating and exhibiting his paintings upside down, he encouraged viewers to engage with ‘the painting itself’ rather than just its subject or narrative. When a portrait is hung conventionally, one might simply identify it as a person and move on; however, by inverting the image, the focus shifts to ‘how’ it was painted—the choice of colours and the mastery of the brushwork. Thus, the upside-down painting became Baselitz’s distinct trademark.
By the 1980s, he stood at the centre of the global art world as a leading figure of ‘Neo-Expressionism’. While Minimalism and Conceptual Art had dominated the 1970s, Baselitz reaffirmed the enduring value of painting through his vigorous brushstrokes, expressive bodies, and intense palettes. He proved that the act of painting remained a vital and profound mode of expression in the modern age. As other significant artists joined this movement, Neo-Expressionism became one of the most powerful currents in contemporary art.
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Though he has left us, his extraordinary legacy continues through his art. On the 6th of this month, his final series of paintings, Eroi d’Oro, will be unveiled at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice. In Korea, a large-scale retrospective is scheduled in August at the Sehwa Museum of Art in August, alongside a solo exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac Seoul.
