Press release
From June 8 to July 20, 1998, the Michael Werner Gallery in Cologne is showing: Georg Baselitz, New Works.
The 16 paintings in the exhibition, some up to 250 x 200 cm in size, were created in the second half of 1997, following Baselitz's series of "Family Pictures". In the new works, the artist seeks and finds a more distanced attitude towards that very personal area of family pictures. The now relevant themes can be circumscribed by the term "home".
Picture titles, such as "Schön böhmisch", "Noch schlesisch", "Folklore" or "Volkskunst" already offer first hints to the extended environment, on which Baselitz now concentrates.
Motivic reminiscences of the family pictures are combined with forms borrowed from both Slovakian and other Eastern European folk art: The figures kneel, dance over church steeples, distribute alms, hold a child in their arms, reach hands out to the sides.
In analogy to the expansion of the content of the closest family circle, Baselitz also designs his works formally more expansive: the figures have a lot of space around them. Movement is possible on these wide stages. Sometimes cut figures open up the scenes additionally, evoking the idea of infinite concatenation. The men, women, children, and objects, all depicted "upside down," seem weightless, but not without place. The place is abstract and concrete: on the one hand determined by yellow, violet or gray oval shapes that question the figures similar to saintly figures, on the other hand by magenta, heavy rose petals that represent object and abstract pictorial form at the same time.
As in the paintings of Eastern European folk art, a broken melancholy mood prevails in Baselitz's works. A mood that is always associated with "homeland."
More detailed notes and explanations on the pictures are offered in the text by Werner Schade, which is printed in the bilingual exhibition catalog. In it, all 16 works are also illustrated in color.
For further information, please do not hesitate to contact us.
