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Lot Essay
‘I was born into a destroyed order, a destroyed landscape, a destroyed people, a destroyed society … I was forced to question everything’
–Georg Baselitz
A visionary drawing executed in 1966, the present work sits at the intersection of two of Georg Baselitz’s most important early series. Rendered with the raw linear intuition that defines the artist’s graphic practice, it captures the moment at which his isolated, wandering ‘Heroes’ began to morph into his celebrated ‘Fracture’ works. Initiated in 1965, Baselitz’s ‘Heroes’, or ‘New Types’, were conceived as self-portraits: lone revolutionaries, cast adrift in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Part Romantic demi-gods, part wounded victims, these figures were inspired by the haunting images of German soldiers returning from the Second World War, and sought to express the state of humanity in its aftermath. In 1966, Baselitz and his young family moved from Berlin to a large house in the countryside at Osthofen. There he began his ‘Fracture’ works: pictures of lost innocence, depicting pastoral, Germanic subjects fragmented into multiple planes. Common to both these series was a theme that plagued German artists of Baselitz’s generation: the role of the painter in a divided post-War landscape. ‘You found yourself suddenly in a very alien, chilly environment’, Baselitz explained. ‘When the traditional ties are gone, when there are no more teachers, no more fathers’ (G. Baselitz, quoted in German Art from Beckmann to Richter, Berlin 1997, p. 120). Drawing upon eclectic sources, ranging from sixteenth-century woodcuts to Italian Mannerism and German Expressionism, the present work speaks directly to this sense of rootlessness. In 2016, it featured in the major touring exhibition Georg Baselitz: The Heroes, originating at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt.
–Georg Baselitz
A visionary drawing executed in 1966, the present work sits at the intersection of two of Georg Baselitz’s most important early series. Rendered with the raw linear intuition that defines the artist’s graphic practice, it captures the moment at which his isolated, wandering ‘Heroes’ began to morph into his celebrated ‘Fracture’ works. Initiated in 1965, Baselitz’s ‘Heroes’, or ‘New Types’, were conceived as self-portraits: lone revolutionaries, cast adrift in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Part Romantic demi-gods, part wounded victims, these figures were inspired by the haunting images of German soldiers returning from the Second World War, and sought to express the state of humanity in its aftermath. In 1966, Baselitz and his young family moved from Berlin to a large house in the countryside at Osthofen. There he began his ‘Fracture’ works: pictures of lost innocence, depicting pastoral, Germanic subjects fragmented into multiple planes. Common to both these series was a theme that plagued German artists of Baselitz’s generation: the role of the painter in a divided post-War landscape. ‘You found yourself suddenly in a very alien, chilly environment’, Baselitz explained. ‘When the traditional ties are gone, when there are no more teachers, no more fathers’ (G. Baselitz, quoted in German Art from Beckmann to Richter, Berlin 1997, p. 120). Drawing upon eclectic sources, ranging from sixteenth-century woodcuts to Italian Mannerism and German Expressionism, the present work speaks directly to this sense of rootlessness. In 2016, it featured in the major touring exhibition Georg Baselitz: The Heroes, originating at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt.