Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Georg Baselitz.
In this impressive new body of work, powerfully rendered and characteristically imbued with romantic, iconic imagery, Baselitz explores for the first time the enduring theme of the lone horseman. The inverted or, in some cases, reflected image of the horse and the man is made particularly striking by the background that is, in some paintings, almost flattened or, in the words of the artist, “mirrored away” by the use of aluminum or silver paint.
These paintings reference late nineteenth-century figures like Richard Wagner and the romantic Wild West author Karl May, both of whom, like Baselitz, came from the eastern German state of Saxony.
These works were painted in Derneburg, Germany, in the winter, and in Imperia, Italy, in the spring of this year.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, with a preface by the artist and an essay by Alison Gingeras of the Centre Pompidou, Paris, who recently curated the exhibition Cher Peintre.