Der Jäger (The Hunter)

A dynamic early work from 1966, Der Jäger (The Hunter) represents the intersection of two of Georg Baselitz’s most important early series. The titular hunter holds a rabbit, rendered in lively hatched lines. Drawn with the vigorous intuition that defines the artist’s graphic practice, the present work arrests the moment at which his Heroes began to transform into the celebrated Fracture works. In 1966 Baselitz left Berlin and moved to the countryside, and his artistic output of the period reflect his new surroundings: its leafy trees, animals and woodsmen. Indeed, the Fracture series evolved out of his fascination with the forest as both a physical site and the symbolic heart of German Romanticism. Reconciling the country’s recent traumas with its aesthetic history was the theme that plagued German artists of Baselitz’s generation: how to create art in the divided post-war landscape. Drawing upon eclectic sources, ranging from sixteenth-century woodcuts to Italian Mannerism and German Expressionism, the Der Jäger speaks directly to this sense of rootlessness. ‘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).