G. Antonin

Details

Exhibition:
Georg Baselitz, Royal Academy of Arts, London 2007, cat. no. 130, with full-colour illus. Illus. p. 217, on the reverse of the frame with label.

Provenance:
Leo Koenig Inc., New York, on the reverse with label;
Private collection, USA;
Sotheby’s, New York 24 Sept. 2014, lot 329;
Private collection, USA.

Description

• Extremely powerful, dynamic and expressive composition from the important Remix series
• The motif goes back to a work from the group of “Pandemonic” paintings, with which Baselitz caused a sensation in the 1960s
• Georg Baselitz is one of the greatest and most innovative innovators of painting at the end of the 20th century. He has been widely recognised, most recently in an exhibition curated by Ulrich Obrist at the Serpentine Gallery, London

Georg Baselitz began experimenting with his own earlier motifs in 2005. He calls this revisiting of older motifs a “remix” in reference to reinterpretations in music. The painter examines the process of his artistic development and traces changes in his own work, ultimately reinterpreting pictorial inventions. “G. Antonin” from 2006 is one of the works in this Remix series, characterised by a strongly expressive use of colour and form. Baselitz works with a much lighter palette, the motifs appear lighter, brighter and leave all heaviness behind. The model for this “mix” is the painting of the same name from 1962, a work from the “Pandemonic” series of paintings. “G. Antonin” is a reference to Antonin Artaud and his “Theatre of Cruelty”. This is the central source of inspiration for the Pandemonic Manifesto by Georg Baselitz and Eugen Schönebeck. Both the theatre and the manifesto rebel against traditional ideas, celebrating the raw, wild and unbridled as a trend-setter for a renewal of art. With his upside-down motifs, Georg Baselitz already emphasised painterly expression in his early work and questioned conventional ideas of composition and representation. In the Remix series, he not only challenges the viewing habits of his viewers once again, but also his own artistic practice.