Picture "Untitled VII." from the portfolio "Signs" (1999/2000)
Picture "Untitled VII." from the portfolio "Signs" (1999/2000)
Quick info
limited, 60 copies | numbered | signed | etching on handmade paper | framed | size 61.5 x 50.5 cm
Detailed description
Picture "Untitled VII." from the portfolio "Signs" (1999/2000)
Robert Creeley (1926-2005) is one of the most important American poets of modernism. In the German feuilleton of Die Zeit, Clemens Eich attested Creeley's "(...) gift of using the great simple words, of working with them without making big words."
In 1996, Robert Creeley visited Georg Baselitz in his residence called Derneburg Castle. This meeting led to the creation of the portfolio "Signs", limited to 60 copies, with 10 works based on the American author's poems.
Baselitz allows the strictly reduced lines of the etching to meet floral depictions in an intense red in the sheets, thus taking artistic account of Creeley's poetic style.
Original etching, 1999/2000. 60 copies on handmade paper, numbered and signed by hand. Motif size 44 x 33 cm. Sheet size 49.5 x 36.5 cm. Size in frame 61.5 x 50.5 cm as shown.
Producer: ars mundi Edition Max Büchner GmbH, Bödekerstraße 13, 30161 Hanover, Germany, [email protected]
About Georg Baselitz
Georg Baselitz, the painter and sculptor born in Saxony, Germany, primarily became popular because his motifs are upside down - this has been his incomparable trademark since the beginning of the 1970s. While searching for "the picture behind the picture" (Baselitz), he creates a completely new perspective.
However, Baselitz not only turns everything upside down in art but also likes to take on the role of the troublemaker and provocateur. He calls artists of the former GDR state (East Germany) "assholes" and does not believe that women can paint, and labels the documenta exhibition as the "Paralympics".
His rebellious nature even got him into trouble at the beginning of his studies: In 1957 he was expelled from the East Berlin Academy of Fine Arts due to "socio-political immaturity" because his work was inspired by one of the greats - Pablo Picasso. "There was huge dismay. I always thought Picasso was the great communist. But our party members no longer saw him that way. For them, he was a decadent Western painter, an outdated model. Picasso got me kicked out of school," the painter told the german newspaper Spiegel in 2007.
Shortly afterward, Baselitz moved to West Berlin but even there he continued to work against all artistic trends. Instead of abstract painting, he focused on figurative, sometimes dramatic depictions, which led to misunderstanding and ignorance.
The provocation reached its peak in 1963 with his first solo exhibition, where he presented naked and masturbating men to the prudish Berlin society. Followed by confiscations, investigations by the public prosecutor, and plenty of negative headlines in the press. But the general fuss had a pleasant side effect: Overnight, everyone knew who Georg Baselitz was.
Georg Baselitz, who was born in 1938 as Hans-Georg Kern in Deutschbaselitz (now a part of Kamenz, Saxony), Germany, is now considered one of the top figures in the international art scene. His works are exhibited in all the world's major museums and collections. The artist has been honoured with the Kaiserring Art Prize of the City of Goslar, among other accolades. Baselitz taught at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe and the Hochschule der Künste Berlin, and currently lives and works in Inning am Ammersee.
The field of graphic arts, that includes artistic representations, which are reproduced by various printing techniques.
Printmaking techniques include woodcuts, copperplate engraving, etching, lithography, serigraphy, among others.