Painted from a snapshot turned upside down, this portrait of the journalist Martin G. Buttig, part of a group of portraits of the artist’s friends and intimates, has a deliberately estranging affect. Made in 1969, these paintings enabled Baselitz to set his work outside the prevailing dichotomy between abstraction, associated with capitalist West Germany, and the socialist realism of East Germany. They are among the first paintings in which Baselitz deployed the strategy of inversion that would be of enduring interest to him. With this liberating compositional and conceptual conceit, he foregrounded the autonomy of the painterly process.
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Inscription: Signed and dated (lower right): G Baselitz / 1969; signed, dated, and inscribed (verso): Der Werktatiger Dresdeuren / Portrait M.G.B. / 1969 / G Baselitz
the Baselitz Family (1969–2020; their gift to MMA)
Kunstverein in Hamburg. "Georg Baselitz: Bilder 1962–1972," April 20–May 21, 1972.
Cologne. Kunsthalle Köln. "Georg Baselitz: Gemälde, Handzeichnungen, und Druckgraphik," June 25–August 8, 1976.
Brussels. Société des Expositions du Palais de Beaux-Arts. "Peinture en Allemagne, 1981," May 27–July 12, 1981, unnumbered cat. (p. 40).
Cologne. Museum Ludwig. "Europa / Amerika: Die Geschichte einer Künstlerischen Faszination seit 1940," September 6–November 30, 1986, no. 10.
Cologne. Museum Ludwig. "Bilderstreit: Widerspruch, Einheit und Fragment in der Kunst seit 1960," April 8–June 28, 1989, no. 41.
Venice. Palazzo Grassi. "Biennale, 46 Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte. Identity and Alterity: Figures of the Body 1895–1995," June 11–October 15, 1995, no. VII 1.
New York. Gagosian Gallery. "Georg Baselitz, The Turning Point: Paintings 1969–71," September 14–October 30, 2004, unnumbered cat. (p. 19).
Georg Baselitz (German, born Deutschbaselitz, Saxony, 1938)
2015
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