In His Last Interview, Georg Baselitz Unpacks His New Nudes, Identity Art, and Being a Lifelong Outsider

By Devorah Lauter

“I’m sure that the Cini paintings will be the last ones I’ve made,” Georg Baselitz told me a few weeks ago, while sitting in his Munich office. Those words now ring eerily prophetic. Our conversation was the final spoken interview the legendary artist would give. Baselitz passed away on April 30; he was 88.

“Georg Baselitz, the Saxon-born artist who defined German visual art for a generation, profoundly influencing artists around and after him and the international world of art, has died peacefully,” stated an obituary by Robert Isaf, shared by his longtime gallery Thaddaeus Ropac. Known for his inverted, or upside-down, paintings, Baselitz eschewed artistic movements and trends despite often being associated with post-war Neo-Expressionism. He remained an outsider in many respects until the end.

“I tried to belong to a circle in Berlin and beyond—but I never succeeded. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough,” he admitted while sitting in a wheelchair across from me in mid April, a black fedora cocked jauntily to the side, as he slowly sipped a hot rum and tea grog. “When I turned the paintings upside down, I thought others would follow. But they didn’t,” he remembered.

Baselitz spoke to me in German through a translator (though he seemed to understand everything that was said in English) ahead of a new exhibition titled “Eroi d’Oro [Heroes of Gold]” at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, opening May 6. He had just gotten over a rough virus, I was told, and he looked drawn and frail. Occasionally, he closed his eyes in concentration, as though mustering the strength to speak. By force of will, he found it for the next 45 minutes.