Lot 9 D

With his nonconformist figurative painting, Georg Baselitz had opposed the prevalent art trends since the beginning of his artistic career, provoking by the radical confrontation with recent German history. In the monumental series “Heldenbilder” [hero paintings] created from 1965 onwards, huge, hulking figures with attributes of uniforms or flags rise up; just like their surroundings, they are characterised by mud and devastation, alluding to war and violence.
With the "Frakturbilder" [fracture paintings], as from 1966, Baselitz made a radical compositional break, applying various methods in order to actively disturb the classic picture composition. In early examples of works of this period, he let straight lines run through the motif or divided it into staggered motif strips.
Within the “Frakturbilder”, the depictions of workers or craftsmen – partly explicitly titled “Ein Werktätiger” [a worker] – form a significant group. Here, the fracture is no longer linear; instead, Baselitz deconstructed his seemingly archaic figures within themselves. The resulting fractures and distortions draw from Cubism and Surrealism. The limbs and torsos of the men, apparently woodworkers, butchers or blacksmiths, are executed as loosely connected individual parts. Fragmented, compressed, discontinuous or superimposed, they are inseparably involved in their activities and surroundings. Abstract, often hardly decipherable forms define these paintings.
Our “Werktätiger” [worker] is hard to decipher. The beam lying behind him and his work with the hatchet on a further cube-shaped block identify him as a carpenter. Towering trees or tree stumps in the background locate the scene in a forest. Enigmatic shapes around the figure’s shoulders allow for a variety of interpretations.
A subliminally perceptible sense of power and violence featuring in the early hero paintings can also be found in the “Frakturbilder”. Above all, however, there is a turn towards a rural, rustic world, which can be explained by Georg Baselitz’s biographical background as in 1966, he and his family moved from the metropolis of Berlin to the tranquil town of Osthofen near Worms. Earthy colours then dominated the pictures; in addition to the depiction of traditional trades, the prevailing themes were the forest, wood and hunting.
From 1969 onwards, Baselitz began to turn the motifs of his paintings upside down and thus to move from the figurative pictorial object to the basic perception of form. The “Frakturbilder” are the decisive link to his progression to a broader form of abstraction without forsaking figurative painting.