My paintings are battles against the weight of German history
Georg Baselitz, born into the ruins of one Germany and shaped by the contradictions of another, spent eighty-eight years turning history upside down — sometimes literally. His inverted canvases and axe-hewn sculptures were not provocations for their own sake, but attempts to make the weight of collective guilt visible, strange, and therefore honest. He died as he had lived: a figure too large and too flawed to be easily resolved, leaving behind a body of work that Germany could neither fully claim nor set aside.
- A boy who grew up under two authoritarian regimes channeled that double inheritance into six decades of painting he described as battles against depression and national shame.
- By flipping his canvases upside down in 1969, Baselitz destabilized the very symbols — eagles, figures, salutes — that Germany had used to construct and then disown its identity.
- His work entered the chancellery itself when Gerhard Schröder hung an inverted eagle behind his desk, making state power and artistic unease briefly, uncomfortably cohabit.
- A raised-arm sculpture at Venice, a dismissal of women painters in the press, and a lifelong habit of burning bridges kept his legacy perpetually contested even as his auction prices soared.
- He leaves behind a reputation that resists easy tribute — monumental in influence, genuine in its reckoning with history, and marked by blind spots that art historians will argue over as long as the paintings hang.
Georg Baselitz was born Hans-Georg Kern in 1938, near Dresden, and grew up inside two successive German catastrophes — first Nazism, then socialist East Germany. He crossed into West Berlin at nineteen, borrowed the name of his hometown, and began making art that was immediately, deliberately difficult. In 1963, two of his paintings were confiscated from a gallery for their sexual imagery; the court case made him notorious. He wore the notoriety without apology.
The move that defined him came in 1969, when he began painting his canvases upside down. It was not a stunt. He was searching for a way to keep figuration alive without letting it become comfortable — to make the human form strange enough to carry the strangeness of German history. The technique produced his eagle series: blotchy, finger-painted birds tumbling through inverted space, the imperial symbol of both the Third Reich and the Federal Republic rendered permanently unable to land. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder eventually hung one behind his desk in the chancellery, where it appeared in official portraits — a postwar leader using an artist's instability as a form of statecraft.
His relationship with history was never clean. A linden-wood sculpture shown at the 1980 Venice Biennale, hacked with axes and chainsaws, bore an arm raised in what many read as a Nazi salute. Baselitz insisted the gesture derived from a West African artifact, not the Third Reich. The controversy never fully resolved. Neither did his 2013 claim, repeated in 2022, that women simply do not paint very well — a statement he later partially retracted, but which lodged itself permanently in his public record alongside his admiration for Tracey Emin and Artemisia Gentileschi.
He was, by his own account, aggressive and combative — qualities he considered virtues. He withdrew his work from documenta in protest, dismissed East German realists in unprintable terms, and placed himself in deliberate opposition to comfort of any kind. What held it all together was a genuine conviction that painting was a form of suffering made useful. 'My paintings are battles,' he told Der Spiegel. For sixty years, those battles shaped German visual art — complicated, impossible to ignore, and now, at last, finished.
Georg Baselitz, born Hans-Georg Kern in a small town near Dresden in 1938, spent his life painting the weight of German history. He died peacefully at 88, his death confirmed Thursday by the Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, which represented him for decades. In six decades of work—paintings, sculptures, prints—he became one of Germany's most consequential living artists, a figure whose influence extended beyond the gallery walls into the offices of chancellors and the arguments of art historians still trying to parse what he meant.
He grew up in Nazi Germany and then in the socialist East, studying art in East Berlin before crossing into West Berlin in 1957 at nineteen. He took the name Baselitz in 1961, borrowing it from the town of his birth. His early work was deliberately provocative. In 1963, authorities confiscated two of his paintings from a gallery—they were laden with sexual imagery—and the ensuing court battle made him a name. He was, as he told Der Spiegel, "quite aggressive and quite evil." He meant it as a compliment to himself.
But it was in 1969 that Baselitz found his signature move: he began painting canvases upside down. The inversion was not a gimmick. He was searching for something between pure abstraction and straightforward representation, a way to make figuration strange enough to be honest. The technique yielded a series of eagles—birds rendered in blotchy, finger-painted strokes, tumbling through inverted space. The eagle was loaded with German meaning: it was the emblem of the Third Reich and later of the Federal Republic. By turning it upside down, Baselitz made the symbol unstable, falling, unable to land.
One of these inverted eagles caught the eye of Gerhard Schröder, who led the Social Democratic Party and served as chancellor from 1998 to 2005. Schröder hung the painting prominently behind his desk in the chancellory. It appeared in his official portraits. The artist's work had become state decoration, a way for a postwar German leader to signal his reckoning with the past.
Yet Baselitz's relationship with history was never simple. In 1980, he exhibited a wooden sculpture at the Venice Biennale—a figure carved from linden wood, attacked with an axe and chainsaw, its arm raised in what looked unmistakably like a Nazi salute. The sculpture provoked outrage. Baselitz later insisted he had never meant to evoke the Third Reich. The gesture, he said, was one of deference, inspired by an artifact from the Lobi people of Burkina Faso. Whether the explanation satisfied anyone is unclear. The work remained controversial, a permanent question mark in his legacy.
He rose to international prominence in the early 1980s and became one of the most expensive living German painters—outpriced only by Gerhard Richter. He was opinionated, sometimes brutally so. He admired Jackson Pollock's abstract expressionism and dismissed the realist painters who had continued working in East Germany after the wall fell, calling them "assholes." In 1977, he withdrew his own work from documenta in Kassel in protest against the presence of East German artists. He was, in other words, a man who believed in taking stands.
But his stands sometimes revealed something less admirable. He told Der Spiegel in 2013 that "women don't paint very well." He repeated the claim in a 2022 interview with The Guardian, citing the art market as proof: even though women made up more than 90 percent of painting students in art academies, very few succeeded. The market, he said, doesn't lie. He later walked back some of these statements and expressed admiration for Tracey Emin and Artemisia Gentileschi, but the damage was done. His dismissal of female artists became part of his public record, a reminder that even artists who grapple seriously with history can fail to see what is in front of them.
What remained constant was his conviction that painting was a form of struggle. "All German painters have neuroses when it comes to Germany's past," he told Der Spiegel. "All that weighed on me in the form of a strong bout of depression. My paintings are battles." For sixty years, he fought those battles on canvas and in wood, leaving behind a body of work that defined German visual art for a generation—complicated, provocative, impossible to ignore.
Notable Quotes
All German painters have neuroses when it comes to Germany's past. All that weighed on me in the form of a strong bout of depression. My paintings are battles.— Georg Baselitz, Der Spiegel, 2013
I am an avant-gardist. What I do is quite aggressive and quite evil.— Georg Baselitz, Der Spiegel
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
When he inverted those paintings starting in 1969, what was he actually trying to solve?
He was stuck between two things that seemed incompatible—abstraction and figuration. Pure abstraction felt like escape. Straight representation felt like it couldn't hold the weight of what he needed to say. Turning the canvas upside down was a way to make the familiar strange, to defamiliarize the image so it could carry meaning again.
And the eagles specifically—why paint the symbol of the state over and over?
Because the eagle belonged to everyone and no one. It was the Third Reich's emblem, then the Federal Republic's. By inverting it, making it tumble, he was saying the symbol itself is unstable. It can't hold steady. That's what postwar Germany felt like to him—a nation trying to stand on symbols that kept falling.
Schröder hung one behind his desk. Did that validate the work or compromise it?
Both, probably. It meant the work had entered the machinery of state. A chancellor was using his painting to signal something about German identity and reckoning. That's influence. But it also means the work became decoration, absorbed into the very system it was questioning.
The sculpture at Venice in 1980—the one that looked like a Nazi salute. Do you believe his explanation about the Lobi people?
I don't know if belief is the right frame. What matters is that the work provoked exactly the question it seemed designed to provoke. Whether he intended it or not, he made something that forced people to confront the gesture, to ask what it means, to sit with discomfort. That's what his best work did.
He said his paintings were battles. Battles against what?
Against the depression that came from being German, from inheriting that history. Against the inadequacy of representation itself. Against the market, against other artists, against the idea that art could be innocent or apolitical. He was fighting on multiple fronts at once.
And the things he said about women painters—how does that sit with the rest of his work?
It's a failure. A significant one. He could see the weight of history in symbols and gestures, but he couldn't see the exclusion happening in his own field, in his own time. That blindness is part of his legacy too.