In 1965/66, Baselitz worked on his canvas paintings and drawings in Florence and Berlin. At a time when everything was up for discussion for a young artist in a divided Germany, it was not only the future of painting, which was caught up in ideological and dogmatic disputes between international abstraction and Socialist Realism but also the future of his homeland in the Cold War. In 1965, the painter was 27 years old and lived in West Berlin, absorbed in making his paintings of desolate, rebellious, broken, and great men – his soldiers, painters, types, and heroes. These are figures that harbor not only the future but also the past. His works were shown in Berlin at the Galerie Werner & Katz, newly established in 1963, and in Munich at Friedrich & Dahlem in 1965. The scandal of 1963 and the associated press reports – with his paintings “Die große Nacht im Eimer” (1962/63), “Der nackte Mann” (1962), and “Geschlecht mit Klößen” (1963), the provocative painter became entangled in the current debate on morality – shaped expectations of his art far beyond the actual event. He continued on the same path of defiance in a completely different environment: at the Villa Romana artists' residence in Florence.

As a fellow of the venerable Villa Romana, Baselitz inevitably encountered the writings of the art historian Gustav René Hocke (Die Welt als Labyrinth, 1957), who lived in Italy at the time and who appreciated Florence as a place that compelled recognition of the ethical obligation of art. Moreover, Hocke also wrote about Mannerism in art and literature. It stated that “Mannerism is not only an expression of an intellectual crisis, but it is also the realization of a world that has gone off the rails” (Gustav René Hocke, Die Welt als Labyrinth, Hamburg 1957, p. 55). Certainly fascinated by Hocke's remarks, Baselitz began his collection of Mannerist prints, which remains impressive today. And Georg Baselitz moved into a studio opening onto the garden and painted and painted his large formats, the brown-red, rust-red, blood-red, orange-red, brick-red, earth-red, fuchsia-red, rose-red, pink- and flesh-colored, whitish, yellowish structures, mutton, veal and pork heads, threads, loops (see Eva Mongi-Vollmer, Helden ohne Aufstellung, in: Georg Baselitz, Die Helden, Städel-Museum, 2016, p. 23).

Not to mention Baselitz's extensive practice of creating ink drawings, such as the present “Fahne,” a motif the artist used as a metaphor for rebellion from a very early stage, for example, in the etchings “Versperrter” from 1966, and “Mit Roter Fahne” from 1965. In this drawing, black lines dominate, often performing bizarre contortions and producing enigmatic figures, though in other cases also outlining winding and captivating forms. They lure the viewer into an unsteady emotional universe that shows influences of Mannerist art. Baselitz's early interest in distorted forms and his alleged addiction to excess, as he explains in the “Pandemonic Manifesto” written with Eugen Schoenebeck in 1962, is also reflected in the ink drawings. Baselitz combines motifs in a boldly ornamental manner, hiding a female figure and puppies or toy-like animals in them, transforming the white paper into a draped, frayed flag framed by the ornamental excess of the fabric. The pathos of the black line, the immediacy of the brushstrokes, and the barely fixable, uncanny figuration reveal visual references to Baselitz's earlier artistic influences such as Jean Fautrier, Georges Rouault, Antoine Artaud, or Philip Guston. With this drawing, the artist expressed his young, curious artistic vitality, which underlies his characteristically figurative and defiant style to this day. [MvL]