Overview
- Ropac Gallery, which represented him for years, confirmed Thursday that Georg Baselitz died peacefully at 88.
- Across six decades he worked in painting, sculpture and printmaking, and from 1969 became known for inverting subjects to make viewers see the painting rather than the motif.
- His first West Berlin show in 1963 led prosecutors to seize two works as “pornographic,” sparking a court fight that shaped his public image.
- He won broad international recognition after representing West Germany with Anselm Kiefer at the 1980 Venice Biennale, followed by election to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 2019 and a 2021–22 Centre Pompidou retrospective.
- A posthumous exhibition at Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice is slated to open May 6, featuring his Eroi d’Oro portraits on gold grounds that include images of his wife, Elke Kretzschmar.