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“He did not want to be just another local abstract expressionist artist. He wanted to establish a language of his own, and I like to think that’s what he’s succeeded in doing. The art that was being produced in Germany at that time was largely ignoring the facts of the Nazi period. Baselitz always said ‘I can’t shake off my history,’ and therefore he had to find a way of confronting it.” —Sir Normal Rosenthal
Painter Georg Baselitz (b. 1938, Germany) has enjoyed a long, celebrated, and sometimes controversial career, but the greatest living painter? No less an authority than curator and art historian Sir Norman Rosenthal makes the claim in this video from Sotheby’s, but we might have to defer judgment. Regardless, the painting Sir Rosenthal is discussing in this video – With Red Flag (1965) – made nearly 7.5 million GBP, so somebody thinks he’s pretty great.
You know who else thinks Baselitz is great? The Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice apparently does, which just opened the exhibition Baselitz – Academy (through September 8, 2019), a major retrospective of the artist. Most notably, this is the first ever exhibition dedicated to a living artist that has been shown at the renowned Gallerie dell’Accademia. The exhibition is an official Collateral Event of the 58th Venice Biennale.
