Overview

A prolific artist with a protean output, Georg Baselitz has rethought the conventions of a range of media, predominantly painting and sculpture, over the course of a career of some sixty years. Born in 1938, Baselitz was expelled from art school in East Berlin in 1956 for 'socio-political immaturity', and moved to the western half of the city. By the late 1950s, he had rejected the dominant tendencies of both sides of the country and his singular achievement was to reintroduce the figure, compromised and discredited though it was by both Nazism and Communism, into art. By drawing attention to art by 'outsiders', such as psychiatric patients, and invoking a Parisian model of existentialist art and literature, Baselitz proposed an alternative European tradition that did not eliminate the human subject. In alluding later to movements in German painting such as Expressionism as well as to artists like Munch, he also consciously rehabilitated the kind of art that was condemned by Hitler as 'degenerate'. The book follows the development of Baselitz's unique style from his earliest work through to the most recent creations of his eighth decade. Calvocoressi's masterful construction of a chronological narrative helps us to evaluate Baselitz's work in terms of the disruptions of his life - historical upheavals witnessed alongside an astonishing career. With 406 illustrations in colour

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9780500094150

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Reviews

'Brilliantly illustrated and documented by the fine narrative provided here by esteemed author and interlocutor Richard Calvocoressi' - The World of Interiors 'Beautifully written with revealing insight into the artist’s motivations at each stage, it is the most authoritative work on Baselitz to date' - The Art Newspaper 'Beautifully illustrated' - The Telegraph 'Elegantly written and splendidly illustrated, this is by far the best study of Baselitz in English' - The Spectator 'Meticulous … With its grasp of the relevant art-historical readings and cultural-historic issues, and its compelling readings of so many individual works, this new, definitive publication is a masterclass' - The Times Literary Supplement 'Sumptuously illustrated … Calvocoressi’s achievement is to blend art and biography into what will prove to be a useful first monograph in English on this major German artist' - The Burlington Magazine

Author Information

Richard Calvocoressi is currently a director at Gagosian Gallery, and is a former Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. He wrote the catalogue text for Baselitz's first exhibition in a commercial gallery in London, and in 1983 was author of the main catalogue essay for his first retrospective in Britain at the Whitechapel Gallery. As curator responsible for German art at Tate, Calvocoressi was instrumental in the acquisition of his works for the UK national collection.

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