Adler (Eagle)

Georg Baselitz first sketched eagles as a teenager in East Germany, but the bird did not make its official debut until his famed Pandemonium series from the early 1960s. From then, he used the motif consistently, employing the image as a pretext for pictorial innovation. Baselitz’s preoccupation with the eagle reached its apex at the close of the 1970s. Between November 1978 and April 1979, he focused his intensity on large drawings of the animal, using gouache, pencil, and chalk to reimagine the motif. Created in 1979, and acquired by the present owner in 1992, Adler dates to this period of concentrated creation. The bird emerges from a web of black pigment, set against an aqueous ground of dark reds and earthen tones. Within German history, the eagle is a weighted with symbolism: the image was used by Prussian emperors on their coat of arms before being appropriated by the Nazis. By painting his eagle upside down, however, Baselitz challenges its allegorical and historical associations, asking potent questions about the relationship between form and content.