Georg Baselitz
born 1938 in Deutschbaselitz/Saxony, lives in Derneburg/Lower Saxony and Imperia/Italy.
In two large canvases located in the south entrance hall, Georg Baselitz takes up motifs from works by the Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840). As has been his practice since the late 1960s, here too he places the motifs on their heads in order to give priority to the formal structure of the compositions.
His “Friedrich’s Woman on the Abyss” and “Friedrich’s Melancholy” are based on woodcuts of drawings by Caspar David Friedrich, which – employing a light, transparent painting technique – Baselitz has transposed into his own artistic idiom.
Formally, their translucence and expressiveness enables the paintings to assert themselves against the monumental architecture surrounding them, while in terms of content his echoing of Friedrich’s motifs establishes a link between the present and the Romantic period, an epoch of importance in the definition of German identity.