Luhring Augustine is delighted to announce a special exhibition of prints by the renowned artist Georg Baselitz, opening in our Tribeca gallery on October 15, 2021. The presentation will feature prints from the 1960s, a decade marked by growth and discovery for the artist. It was during this period that Baselitz first traveled to Italy and was introduced to Mannerist prints and techniques. Spawning a profound fascination with this style, the experience heavily influenced his then burgeoning career as a printmaker – a part of his practice that is regarded as of equal significance with his celebrated paintings. This exhibition will showcase a selection of prints that display the range of methods that Baselitz employs. Highlighted among the works are his “Hero” or “New Type” imagery of singular male figures depicted in heroic stances rendered with dramatic contours and wild gestural lines, their valor is subverted by their weary expressions and tattered clothing. These subjects challenge common perceptions of masculinity, and reference Baselitz’s childhood experience of violence and destruction during the war and post-war era in Germany.
The exhibition will underscore Baselitz’s impressive skill in a diverse array of printmaking techniques, focusing on his woodcuts, drypoints, and etchings. The range of methods reveals the artist’s acute interest in the physicality and laborious nature of printmaking processes. Baselitz has discussed in depth the charge he finds in the resistance of printmaking tools on the surfaces of printing plates, which creates a kind of symbolic power that is translated into the compositions of the finished print. By deviating in small ways from traditional printmaking techniques he developed his own distinct methods, these include the use of oil rather than printer’s ink, and the occasional addition of paint by hand to a completed print.
About the Artist
Georg Baselitz was born in 1938 in Deutschbaselitz, Saxony, Germany, and is widely regarded as one of the preeminent artists to come out of the post-war era. Among the numerous institutions that have held major solo exhibitions of his work are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Städel-Museum, Frankfurt, Germany; Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C; as well as notably, the first show by living artist held at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, Italy. His work is in the permanent collections of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Fondation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Tate Modern, London, UK; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; among many others. A forthcoming Georg Baselitz retrospective is set to open at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in October 2021, and will be on view concurrently with Luhring Augustine’s exhibition.