Georg Baselitz
We are delighted to exhibit a group of new etchings by Georg Baselitz (b. 1938) that see the artist's attention turn to the subject of the deer, a recurring motif in his work, highly symbolic in the history of art. A selection of works from Deer, 2021 are shown together with recent prints including portraits of artists Frank Auerbach, Tracey Emin and Lucio Fontana and the artist’s wife Elke, who has been his muse for over sixty years.
Other prints on show feature hands and feet. Estranged from the body, writhing, twisting hands and disembodied feet are rendered in white and gold and emerge from dark backgrounds. These works form part of Baselitz’s ongoing survey of the human form.
Baselitz states; “I’ve never seen myself as someone with a particular tradition, following in other artists’ footsteps, eager to take up and continue what others have begun – I always find myself in places that no one else has been to, always at the beginning.”
Baselitz is a prolific printmaker and printmaking is as essential a part of his artistic practice as painting, drawing and sculpture. He uses a variety of intaglio techniques to realise these new works; having initially drawn and proofed the plates on his own etching press at his studio on the Ammersee, outside Munich, he then works with a master printer who pulls the final editions.
This exhibition can be seen alongside Georg Basteliz: Belle Haleine (10 November – 22 December 2023), a show marking the first time a series of ten provocative prints by the artist have been exhibited together since they were made and shown over 20 years ago.
For a complete list of available works by Georg Baselitz please contact [email protected].
“If you want to stop constantly inventing new motifs, but still want to go on painting pictures, then turning the motif upside down is the most obvious option. The hierarchy of sky above and ground down below is in any case only a pact that we have admittedly got used to but that one absolutely doesn’t have to believe in.”
"Drawing hands has always been a difficult art class assignment because people say that hands are a particularly expressive subject. The abstract hand, the unidentifiable, anonymous hand, is the same image that can be found in Aboriginal Art or in cave paintings.
They are simply a representation of the hand; they do not reflect the personality of their maker, but are symbolic only of the figure of the hand itself. Here, all that matters is the image and the symbol.”
“I had to find a new vocabulary for abstraction; the body became a way of fragmenting the painting to generate a new abstract effect.”
This exhibition can be seen alongside Georg Basteliz: Belle Haleine, a show marking the first time a series of ten provocative prints by the artist have been exhibited together since they were made and shown over 20 years ago. Find out more.
Books
For a complete list of works in the exhibition please contact [email protected]
Georg Baselitz; Deer VI (detail), 2021