Georg Baselitz: 8 cool facts

Georg Baselitz (born 23 January 1938) is a German painter, sculptor and graphic artist. In the 1960s he became capably known for his figurative, expressive paintings. In 1969 he began painting his subjects upside all along in an effort to overcome the representational, content-driven mood of his earlier pretend and stress the exaggeration of painting. Drawing from myriad influences, including art of Soviet time illustration art, the Mannerist era and African sculptures, he developed his own, distinct artistic language.

He was born, as Hans-Georg Kern, in Deutschbaselitz [de], Upper Lusatia, Germany. He grew happening amongst the pain and demolition of World War II, and the concept of destruction plays a significant role in his liveliness and work. These autobiographical circumstances have so returned throughout his amassed oeuvre. In this context, the artist stated in an interview: “I was born into a destroyed order, a destroyed landscape, a destroyed people, a destroyed society. And I didn’t desire to reestablish an order: I had seen sufficient of so-called order. I was provoked to Ask everything, to be ‘naive’, to Begin again.” By disrupting any unadulterated orders and breaking the common conventions of perception, Baselitz has formed his personal circumstances into his guiding artistic principles. To this day, he yet inverts anything his paintings, which has become his unique and most defining feature in his work.