Georg Baselitz: Eroi d'Oro Solo exhibition at Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice

The Fondazione Giorgio Cini presents an exhibition of new works by Georg Baselitz, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, Director of the Institute of Art History of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini and supported by Thaddaeus Ropac gallery. The exhibition coincides with the 61st Venice Biennale, and features the German artist’s most recent series of large-scale paintings, which explore the interplay between luminous gold grounds and delicately rendered figures, overlaid in some compositions with bursts of impasto colour. 

The golden planes that form the grounds of the works on view, by their reflectivity, offer no illusion of depth, creating a flatness reminiscent of medieval icons or the gilded backgrounds of the works of Northern Renaissance painter Stefan Lochner. Georg Baselitz’s painted bodies, executed in sharp lines, lie bare across these grounds as if floating on their surfaces, rendered through an approach that inherits from line drawing. They include larger-than-life self-portraits, as well as numerous depictions of the artist’s wife, Elke, his lifelong companion and recurring model.