Georg Baselitz

Heinz and Anni Raith, Fürstenfeldbruck
Michael Werner, New York
Private Collection
Sale: Christie's, New York, Post-War and Contemporary Art, 12 May 2004, Lot 144
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Paris, Centre National d'Art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou, Georg Baselitz: Dessins 1962-1992, 1993-94, p. 18, illustrated

The colours in the catalogue illustration are accurate. This work is in very good condition. There is undulation and handling creases to the sheet throughout, which are inherent to the artist's working process and choice of medium. Close inspection reveals a few nicks and tears at intervals to the edges, some of which have been stabilized.
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"Standing within a long tradition of German art, and using time-honoured media, Baselitz has striven constantly to confront the realities of history and art history, to make them new and fresh in a manner that can only be described as heroic; heroic because his art has consciously gone against the grain of fashion, while always remaining modern" Norman Rosenthal, 'Why the Painter Georg Baselitz is a Good Painter' in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Royal Academy of Arts, Baselitz, 2007, p. 15

Among the most impressive works on paper ever conceived by Georg Baselitz, Untitled (Hero) belongs squarely at the centre of the seminal and highly acclaimed series of 'Hero Paintings' or 'New Types' that he executed in 1965 and 1966. It brilliantly exhibits the revered artist's distinctive technique and the iconic portrait of the Hero emerges from a relentless onslaught of vigorous mark-making in an array of media. This protagonist is archetypal of the vanquished and returning survivors of Germany's World War II devastation that populate the series: uprooted sufferers of modern life that embody a common struggle. With flowing hair and bulging anatomy, this epic wanderer epitomises the "fighters and partisans, poets and painters—with whom Baselitz identified. They are heroes, and anti-heroes, existentialist figures from the world of Samuel Beckett, survivors of a world in chaos" (Diane Waldman in: Exhibition Catalogue., New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Georg Baselitz, New York, 1995, p. 37).

In 1965 the twenty-seven year old Baselitz had won a scholarship to the German Academy at the Villa Romana in Florence, and there he discovered late sixteenth-century Mannerism characterised by distorted bodies and sinuous linearity. This influence is clear in the present work, where Baselitz's handling of line to describe the pulsating forms is so fluid and emphatic. Furthermore, the tragic character and implicit isolation of this figure also testifies to the strong effect of German Romanticism on Baselitz's output at this time. Finally, with its bold handling of paint and exhibition of gesture Untitled (Hero) stands as an unashamed rejection of the mechanical reproduction that defined contemporaneous trends evolving around Pop, and is a very early declaration of the total inimitability of Georg Baselitz's art.