Untitled (Eine Kuh (A Cow))

In Georg Baselitz’s Untitled (Eine Kuh (A Cow)), 1966, an intensity of jet-black ink blends together to form a portrait of the titular animal. Depicted straight on, the cow stands resolutely within an open field, and his steadfast stare pierces the space just beyond the frame. The artist’s use of varied stippling evokes the stillness of a summery meadow; in the background, a few abstracted and watery lines hint at a small forest or a far-off mountain range. In 1966, Baselitz left Berlin and moved to the countryside in search of the pastoral; indeed, Untitled (Eine Kuh (A Cow)) is carefully and naturalistically sketched out, and seems linked to the artist’s Fracture series of the late- 1960s, which grew out of an interest in the forest both literally and as a symbol within German Romanticism. Baselitz has rendered the animal in gestural and energetic lines, a vigorous hatching that animates the cow’s muscles and speaks to a simmering strength: as Baselitz himself wrote, ‘Drawings are like caprioles, they amaze you and scare you and terrify you’ (G. Baselitz, ‘Questioning Myself’, 1993, reprinted in Georg Baselitz: Collected Writings and Interviews, D. Gretenkert (ed), London, 2010, p. 222). Baselitz is prolific draughtsman and he understands drawing as a parallel and separate to his painting practice. In drawing, Baselitz exhibits the same intoxicating energy as in his colourful canvases: capturing the cow’s inherent character, Untitled (Eine Kuh (A Cow)), too, seems ready to charge off the page.