“My work is completely inconceivable without history, without a past.”
—Georg Baselitz
Imbued with latent energy, vacillating between aggression and vulnerability, Georg Baselitz captures his subject in a liminal moment between life and death. As corpulent strokes of graphite flicker to reveal the figure’s titled head and frayed uniform, sensual washes of ink add spatial depth: an individual that is both statuesque yet tender.
Created in an explosive swell of productivity beginning in the summer of 1965, GETEILTER HELD (DIVIDED HERO) is among some 130 drawings belonging to Baselitz’s ‘Heroes’ series. Conceived 20 years after the end of the Second World War, GETEILTER HELD (DIVIDED HERO) demands a repressed generation, more easily forgotten than remembered, are immortalised through vehement line and loaded mass. Contrary to the West German ‘economic miracle’, the hero’s sullen face and wounded body challenges false state narratives with the visceral reality of a society fractured by war.
Academic experience alongside the recent past informs Baselitz’s mark making. In 1965, Baselitz received a scholarship at the German Academy at the Villa Romana in Florence where he first encountered the Mannerism of Florentine artists like Rosso Fiorentino and Pontormo. The Heroes’ tilted neck, attenuated limbs and twisted body reference the late 16th century movement: mark-making that bestows the figure with a sensitivity and softness, a reflection that makes GETEILTER HELD (DIVIDED HERO) all the more poignant.
