Georg Baselitz

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg / Paris
Vonderbank Art Galleries, Berlin

Exhibition Catalogue, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg / Paris, Georg Baselitz. Spaziergang ohne Stock, 2005, p. 25, illustrated in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Vonderbank Art Galleries, Berlin, Georg Baselitz. 1970-2005, 2006, p. 27, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the overall tonality is richer and more vibrant in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Upon very close inspection there are some stable drying cracks to some of the white impasto paint at the centre, and some light wear to the upper right and lower right corners. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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"I carry on working. Just as in the past people have not understood my pictures, they do not understand my later works, either. This is simply how it is: people don't understand that even an old artist can still develop." (Edvard Munch, 1933) The present work belongs to Baselitz's acclaimed recent series of works that took as its central theme an intensive study of the artistic methods employed by Norwegian expressionist artist, Edward Munch (1863-1944) during his late career.

The trees that dominate these monumental works are inspired by Munch's purchase of an estate in Ekely, near Oslo, where he lived from 1919 until his death. The name Ekely means "in the shelter of the oaks", and it was in this rustic haven, free from all stylistic constraints and models, that Munch produced his most radical work characterised by its freedom of brushwork, its unconventional colouration and its themes steeped in his immediate surroundings.

Like Munch, Baselitz has always believed in the need for progression in his work both stylistically and thematically. This has often taken the form of revisiting old problems and motifs and approaching them from different angles. Baselitz in this series synthesises Munch's late, liberal style and situation with motifs relating to his own life and childhood. "I think it's time to take up my old stuff again, my childhood drawings and the things I did at school," Baselitz wrote in 2001. Thus this recent work can be seen to hark back to the small oil painting Sandteichdamm (sand pond dam) which he had painted when he was about seventeen, and which shows the immediate surroundings of the house where he had been born. The motif thus becomes a kind of negative, remembered medium, and so too these recent paintings have an unreal, photographic negative look about them.