Georg Baselitz

Georg Baselitz (b. 1938 in Deutschbaselitz) is indisputably one of the most important German artists of the present day. He has been confronting the art world from the 1960s onward with his large, powerful and distinctive works. Within his painting, Baselitz arrived at his artistic trademark in 1969, when he broke with painterly conventions and turned his landscapes, portraits and nudes upside down. In 2018, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, the Fondation Beyeler devoted an extensive retrospective to Georg Baselitz, created in close collaboration with the artist. In this pen-and-ink drawing, dated August 2022, Baselitz treats one of his characteristic motifs and one that he has explored regularly since the 1970s: the eagle. The choice of motif thereby falls on a subject that very deliberately triggers different associations, and which may certainly be understood as a provocation. As king of the sky and at the same time the heraldic emblem of Germany, in Baselitz's drawing the history-laden eagle is turned upside down, thereby losing all heraldic symbolism. Even through this inversion, however, the plummeting bird of prey-rapidly executed in a red ink that reinforces its menace-loses none of its majestic grandeur or defiant power.