Georg Baselitz was born Hans-Georg Kern in Deutschbaselitz, Saxony, in 1938. He took his name from his birthplace. He studied art in East Berlin but was forced to quit after failing to align with the socialist agenda in East Germany, and fled to the West in 1957.
He continued his studies in West Berlin and had his first solo exhibition there in 1963. Two of the works were confiscated for sexual symbolism, and Baselitz was prosecuted; the case was later dropped.
Known for large canvases
Baselitz often worked on extremely large canvases that he turned upside down; this became his trademark. He often grappled with the burden of Germany's past after World War II in his works.
"All German painters have a neurosis about the German past. My paintings are, if you like, battles," he told the German magazine Der Spiegel in 2013.
He had an international breakthrough and became a role model for young German artists in the 1980s. In 2004, he was awarded the Praemium Imperiale, which can be considered a kind of Nobel Prize in art.
“Women don't paint as well”
Baselitz was also known for his controversial views, Der Spiegel wrote. For example, in an interview with the magazine, he claimed that men are fundamentally better artists.
Women don't paint as well. That's a fact. Of course there are exceptions. Agnes Martin, or Paula Modersohn-Becker. But even she is no Picasso, no Modigliani, no Gauguin.
When the Moderna Museet showed a suite of older paintings by Baselitz in 2016, his statements about female artists led to a protest exhibition that ran simultaneously at a basement gallery in Stockholm.
During the latter part of his life, Baselitz lived with his wife in Salzburg, Austria.
He was 88 years old.
