First Solo Show in South America of Works by Georg Baselitz Opens in Sao Paulo

SAO PAULO.- The Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo is presenting the exhibition Georg Baselitz: Pinturas Recentes [Georg Baselitz: Recent Paintings]. The first solo show of the artist’s works in South America, it features a set of 30 paintings produced over the last 12 years – a period in which the artist has revisited and given a new face to the human types he made in the 1970s and ’80s, which constitute the central theme of his oeuvre. Accompanying and reacting to the contemporary cultural dynamics, his painting has become more lyrical, quicker and fluid, and also more ascerbic and ironic. Baselitz denominated this project “Remix,” thus assuming – in a critical and personal way – this concept widely used in other fields of mass culture. Through the artworks of this last decade, the painter has reexplored his themes, his obsessions, his existential and artistic trajectory, beginning a new phase. Georg Baselitz’s oeuvre, which he began constructing in the 1960s, is marked by influences of German expressionism and North American abstract expressionism. Throughout his career Baselitz has also assimilated other influences, such as African art and 16th-century French and Italian mannerism. The free use of colors, the aggressive brushstrokes, the alternation of abstract and figurative images and, especially, the representation of upside-down human figures, have made his work unmistakable. On the occasion of this show a catalog will be published with an introduction by Marcelo Araújo, director of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; Paulo Venancio Filho; Carla Schulz-Hoffmann, director of the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; and the artist himself.

Born in 1938 as Hans-Georg Kern, in 1961 the artist assumed the name Georg Baselitz in allusion to the city of his birth, Deutschbaselitz, in what was then East Germany. The artist has focused his provocative and implacable gaze primarily on the heavy German legacy in the postwar period and extending through the reunification, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. His profound involvement with the expressionist tradition and his view of the contemporary world have made Baselitz one of the great artists of the latter half of the 20th century up to today. This dimension of his oeuvre has been recognized by the great art institutions worldwide that have shown his work, and is present in this set. In his long artistic career, Baselitz has represented Germany at various important venues, including the 1980 Venice Biennale and Documenta V and VII in 1972 and 1982, respectively. In 1995, the Guggenheim Museum of New York held the artist’s first large retrospective, which was later shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, and at the Neue Nationagalerie in Berlin. In 1996, the Musée de l’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris also held a retrospective. More recently, in 2007, the largest retrospective to date was held at the Royal Academy in London. The works of the “Remix” series were shown for the first time in 2006 and 2007, at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, and at the Albertina Museum, Vienna.

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