Georg BaselitzPeintre – Graveur IV

“The painting partisan” was what Cornelius Tittel called Georg Baselitz in a review (3 November 2021) in the daily “Die Welt” of the great retrospective at the Centre Pompidou Paris. For Heiner Müller, in a conversation with Alexander Kluge in 1991, the partisan was “within a modern, that is to say technocratically defined structure something like a dog on the motorway.” And it is in this position of the outsider that Tittel sees the artist Georg Baselitz becoming, over the decades, a monolith whom “the Académie des Beaux-Arts has now admitted to its ranks as the only German. The sword he was presented with during the ceremonial occasion is intended to symbolise his immortality. It would no longer have been needed.” Together with the editors Rainer Michael Mason and Detlev Gretenkort we now announce the publication of volume IV (1989–1992) of the printed work; it contains catalogue nos. 718–1010. As already set out when volume III appeared, there can be no question that Georg Baselitz’s printed œuvre stands in its own right alongside his painting and sculpture. For decades the artist has not only shaped the medium in the diversity of its various technical approaches and solutions; through his unparalleled virtuosity he has moved it into the front rank of post-war modern art.