Georg Baselitz is almost proverbially known for the seemingly simple but truly revolutionary strategy of turning the motif upside down in his paintings. Since the early 1960s, his art has challenged us, being provocative and surprisingly diverse: starting with the existentialist figures in paintings like Die große Nacht im Eimer – which was removed by the police from his first solo exhibition as an indecent depiction – or the series of Heroes, where wounded, exposed figures wander through a destroyed landscape and order. Increasingly, the pictorial space itself is broken up in the following fracture paintings, and by the end of the decade, the artist turns the world completely upside down: trees, factories, eagles, or self-portraits as nudes, all motifs actually painted upside down. In this way, Baselitz liberates his painting and makes room for conceptual color combinations and unusual themes such as orange eaters, memories of Soviet propaganda art, or more recently the so-called remixes, in which he re-engages in a timeless dialogue with earlier images. As a master of drawing, woodcut, and etching, Baselitz also created raw sculptures carved from wood with axe and chainsaw starting in 1980, and then expanded his range of materials to include bronze in the late 2000s.

This updated and unlimited monograph is the most comprehensive overview of the artist’s work and features large-format reproductions of more than 400 works in all media, along with installation shots and portraits. The texts approach the art from various perspectives: longtime Baselitz expert Richard Shiff paints a portrait of the artist and his dark humor; critic Jonathan Jones provides an essay on the painter’s stylistic development; art historian and curator Eva Mongi-Vollmer writes about the sculptural work since its controversial debut at the 1980 Venice Biennale; art historian and curator Carla Schulz-Hoffmann analyzes the artistic strategies of the paintings; author and director Alexander Kluge describes the handling of myth and history in a collection of literary sketches; and art journalist Cornelius Tittel visited Baselitz for a studio conversation. Historical statements and an illustrated biography complete this overview, in which the art of Georg Baselitz is shown as vividly and in as much detail as never before.