Georg Baselitz

Michael Werner Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1998

This work is in very good condition overall. There is evidence of light wear to the sides and edges of the canvas, most noticeable as some surface soiling in the corners of the canvas. Under ultraviolet light condition there is no evidence of restoration. Framed.
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Distinguished for his defiance of traditional artistic tendencies, Georg Baselitz is an artist who extols an utterly inimitable pictorial language: the upside-down depiction of figurative subjects has become a hallmark of his production since 1969. Executed in 1997, Grosse Rose is an expressively vibrant example of Baselitz’s renowned pictorial process.

In Grosse Rose, Baselitz’s skillful handling of paint produces a work that appears, initially, as a compositionally compelling celebration of color and expression against a stark white canvas, and later reveals itself as a curious relationship between blooming roses and a fetal figure. Baselitz has not only distorted the scales of what he has depicted in an attempt to challenge our perception, this interaction is further confused by the fact that the subjects are inversely orientated. The upside-down figure, in its fantastically autographical Baselitz grey murkiness, comprises the left half of the composition–a subversive gesture inspired by the artist's discovery of the Mannerist painters, in particular Guido Reni's Crucifixion of St Peter (1604-05)–while the right side is enriched by the vivacious red of hovering flourishing roses.

Baselitz effectively detaches literal interpretation from the painted image: “If you stop fabricating motifs but still want to carry on painting, then inverting the motif is the obvious thing to do. The hierarchy which has the sky at the top and the earth at the bottom is, in any case, only a convention. We have got used to it, but we don’t have to believe in it… What I wanted was quite simply to find a way of making pictures, perhaps with a new sense of detachment” (Georg Baselitz in conversation with Peter Moritz Pickshaus, 1990 in: Franz Dahlem, Georg Baselitz, Cologne 1990, p. 29). Grosse Rose is a sophisticated example of Baselitz’s intentional probing into the question of art; his liberating representation from content.