Georg Baselitz

Galerie Neuendorf, Hamburg  

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1979

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. The edges are deckled. There is a minute tear to the right edge towards the top right corner and to the bottom right corner tip. There is a diagonal crease to the top right corner. Close inspection reveals a few spots of oxidation in isolated places to the extreme right edge.
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“I don’t want to create a monster; I want to make something which is new, exceptional, something that only I do... something that references tradition, but is still new.”

Georg Baselitz quoted in: Exh. Cat., New York, Gagosian Gallery, Georg Baselitz, 2012, n.p..

Baselitz's Heroes: Two Works on Paper

Ohne Titel (Erstes Frakturbild - Der Neue Typ) (Untitled (First Frakturbild - The New Type)) and Ohne Titel (Falle) (Untitled (Trap)) are bold examples of Georg Basetlitz’s fiercely independent style. In the hatched density of their delineations, in the warped distortions of their figures, and in the influence they take not only from contemporaneous artistic trends, but also from the titans of German art history, they perfectly distil the unique emphases of the Helden (Hero) series. That they both appear to have served as studies for major paintings, and particularly that Ohne Titel (Falle) was for a time tacked onto Baselitz’s studio wall, identifies them as crucial shreds of inspiration for this artist’s greatest corpus of works. In 2016, the Helden will be the exclusive subject of a touring exhibition starting at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt and touring Stockholm, Rome, and Bilbao.

In 1958, while Baselitz was still at art school, a touring exhibition of American contemporary art came to West Berlin. It was the first time that the artist and his German peers had seen Abstract Expressionism; the first time that his generation was exposed to such revolutionary artists as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Phillip Guston, and Clyfford Still. In the artist’s words: “Until then I had lived first under the Nazis, and then in the GDR, Modern Art just did not occur, so I knew almost nothing. Not about German expressionism, Dadasim, Surrealism, or even Cubism… It was overwhelming. And not just for me. Even the professors had not seen this sort of work before” (Georg Baselitz quoted in: Nicolas Wroe, ‘Georg Baselitz: "Am I supposed to be friendly?’’', The Guardian, 14 February 2014, online). Scores of young Germans subsequently absorbed abstraction and action painting into their styles. However, Baselitz felt a strong need to take his artistry in a different direction; to create works that acknowledged the trauma of Germany’s recent past: “I wanted to do something that totally contradicted internationalism: I wanted to examine what it was to be a German now” (Ibid.). Thus, throughout the 1960s, Baselitz worked in a consciously figurative style. He flooded his works with quasi-allegorical figures of distorted monumental gravitas. There were rebels, poets, partisans, and shepherds; figures that seemed at once entirely timeless, and yet apt for the anguish and anxiety of the post-war mood. Der Neue Typ (The New Type), better known as the Helden (Heroes), occupy a central role within this wider decade and they are exemplified by the present works.

It is easy to ascribe the influence of the German Old Masters to the Helden. Baselitz certainly inherited the draughtsmanship traditions of the Northern Renaissance in their creation, particularly relying on Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Dürer. Furthermore, in the sense of epic sublimity that abounds through so much of the series, we can also note the stimulus of Caspar David Friedrich. However, in the present works, we are made more aware of Baselitz as an artist very much attuned to the contemporaneous zeitgeist, responding and engaging to the existentialism that dominated post-war thought. To this end, it is fascinating to note the apparent influence of Alberto Giacometti upon Ohne Titel (Falle), which features the distinctive Giacometti-esque composition of a central seated figure, imbued with an overt sense of sculptural solidity and gravitas. Giacometti was a significant antecedent for Baselitz – similarly concerned by the human figure and similarly concerned by the trauma of the post-war mood. Indeed, Baselitz accrued several works by the French sculptor for his own private collection. That this work also features two large trees is further interesting. The tree serves as a leitmotif throughout Baselitz's oeuvre; he viewed the forest as the ultimate symbol of German Romanticism and later on in his career, turned towards carving sculptures with chainsaws, emphasising the rugged grain of the wood.

A counterpoint between presence and void is also drawn out in Ohne Titel (Erstes Frakturbild - Der Neue Typ). The work is bisected by a thin single line, with the top half shaded in dense hatching and the bottom half devoid of any background articulation apart from some light shading. In the inclusion of this divide, the work can be held up as a prefiguration of another of Baselitz’s important and influential series of paintings – the Frakturbilder – all of which employed a similar device. These works evoked a pervasive sense of dislocation and unease; qualities that Baselitz believes to be inherent to his work, and qualities that are present in abundance in Ohne Titel (Erstes Frakturbild - Der Neue Typ). We are unsure whether our hero is marching or staggering, lunging forward or falling down. This notion of unease caused by splitting, separation, or dislocation was one that was all too apt for Germany in the immediate post-war environment, with the country still divided between East and West, and Fascism still looming large in the collective political memory.

Ohne Titel (Erstes Frakturbild - Der Neue Typ) and Ohne Titel (Falle) demonstrate the manner in which, at a time when Pop art dominated the American scene and Art Informel subjugated much of European taste, Georg Baselitz sequestered himself away to work in a fiercely individualistic style.