With his paintings which explore aspects of abstraction and neo-expressive figuration whilst simultaneously emphasizing gestural paint qualities, Georg Baselitz (born 1938 Hans-Georg Kern in Deutschbaselitz in Saxony/Germany, lives in Derneburg/ Germany) has influenced generations of painters and boosted expressive tendencies in contemporary art after the Second World War. Baselitz grew up in socialist East Germany, where he was expelled from the East Berlin Art Academy due to his provocative artistic beliefs and critical stance towards the communist regime, resuming his studies at the West Berlin Art Academy in 1957, where he moved in 1958. In 1961 he changed his name to Baselitz, his place of birth. His works, investigating issues of painting and figuration with expressiveness and in a variety of formal approaches, continued to be provocative.

The UBS Art Collection includes a few of Baselitz’s early ink and brush drawings from the 1960s featuring dynamic representations of the human figure. From 1966 onwards Baselitz created a series of paintings which analyzed their individual motifs in compositions formed of stripes which opened the pictorial space. In 1969 he developed his now typical style, the depiction of the human figures and other motifs upside down. With this unconventional representation Baselitz questioned and inspired the reflection of traditional issues of painting referring to composition, pictorial space, color, gestures and textures. This approach of inverting figures became his internationally recognized artistic language. The work Untitled (Study for ‘Anna Selbdritt’ Curtain) from 1987 in The UBS Art Collection, executed with colored crayons and graphite on paper is an example of these works. The drawing is one of Baselitz’s studies which he made for the Anna Selbdritt Curtain. Its portrayal of the biblical figure as a nude using expressive colors and combining elements of drawing with characteristics of color and paint, is unexpected and very unlike classic Christian iconography. Anna Selbdritt, mother of Mary and grandmother of Jesus, was traditionally painted next to her daughter Mary and Jesus consistent with the depiction of a certain type of sacred woman. In Baselitz’s drawing the artist does not reflect spiritual matters but her natural fertility, symbolized by showing her as a nude. Next to her are two abstract forms, reminiscent of two calyxes which could be read as metaphors for Anna’s ‘blooming’ which gave birth to Mary and Jesus.

In addition to his paintings and related works, Baselitz, from the late 1970s onwards, also started to create huge and roughly carved wooden sculptures in which influences by German Expressionist sculptors, such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, can be recognized. The UBS Art Collection also includes one of these works by the internationally renowned artist who was one of the laureates of the important global art prize, the Praemium Imperiale of the Japan Art Association, in 2004.

References: Georg Baselitz, ed.by Diane Waldman, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1995.

Georg Baselitz: Der Vorhang “Anna Selbdritt” von 1987 und die dazugehörigen Zeichnungen, by Dieter Koepplin, Kunstmuseum Basel, Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz, 1993.