Georg Baselitz, the German artist known for his upside-down paintings and provocative sculptures, has died at the age of 88. The Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, which represented him for years, confirmed his death on Thursday, stating he died peacefully and had “defined German visual art for a generation.”
Born Hans-Georg Kern in 1938 in Deutschbaselitz, eastern Germany, Baselitz spent his early childhood in Nazi Germany and grew up in socialist East Germany. He studied art in East Berlin before moving to West Berlin in 1957, adopting the name Baselitz as a nod to his hometown. His career spanned six decades, exploring painting, graphic arts, and sculpture.
Baselitz gained notoriety in 1963 when authorities confiscated two sexually symbolic paintings, leading to a high-profile court case. In 1969, he began painting canvases upside down, a technique he used to navigate between abstraction and figurative art. This method produced a series of eagle paintings—the emblem of both the Third Reich and postwar West Germany—which appeared to tumble downward when inverted. One such painting hung behind Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s desk.
His 1980 Venice Biennale sculpture, a wooden figure with an arm raised in what seemed a Nazi salute, sparked controversy. Baselitz insisted it was inspired by an African artefact, not the Third Reich. He grappled with German history and collective guilt, telling Der Spiegel in 2013: “All German painters have neuroses when it comes to Germany’s past… my paintings are battles.”
Baselitz was dismissive of less technically gifted peers and made controversial remarks about female artists, later retracting some statements and praising Tracey Emin and Artemisia Gentileschi. He achieved international fame in the 1980s and became one of the highest-priced living German painters, second only to Gerhard Richter.
