Georg Baselitz

Gagosian is pleased to announce The Painter in His Bed, an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Georg Baselitz in New York.

Over the past six decades, Baselitz has pursued a form of figuration that is direct, provocative, and informed by the history of art. A pioneer of Neo-Expressionism, he began in 1969 to invert his images as a means to focus on the painting process and to slow down the viewer’s perception and comprehension of his works. Often incorporating references to his own previous paintings, Baselitz harnesses uninhibited gestures to create emotionally charged compositions that remain centered on the human form.

The compelling works featured in The Painter in His Bed focus on two motifs: figures in bed and the stag. Defining human and animal anatomy with raw expression, Baselitz negotiates apperception of these subjects through his distinctive painterly approach. Vigorously applying layers of paint, he affixes stretched nylon stockings and sheets of gauze across the upper parts of the paintings or makes monoprinted impressions of their shapes. With these additions, Baselitz extends the innovation of Springtime, his 2021 exhibition in the same space in New York. Dedicated to the spirited provocations of Hannah Höch, Kurt Schwitters, and other Dadaists, the works in Springtime draw upon these artists’ irreverent introduction of everyday materials into the realm of art. Whereas many of the Springtime paintings are exuberantly colored, the new works are dominated by elemental contrasts of black and white.