Ohne Titel. 1963.
Brush and India ink drawing and opaque white.
Signed and dated lower right. On laid paper by Hahnemühle (with watermark). 61 x 48,3 cm (24 x 19 in), the full sheet. [KP].
The strong works from this early period of creation are very rare on the international auction market.

This work is registered in the Archive Georg Baselitz, Munich, under the number GBZ 6642. We are grateful to the archive for the kind support in cataloging this lot.

PROVENANCE: Private collection Hesse.

Baselitz, born as Hans-Gerog Kern, borrowed his artist's name from his home town. After being expelled from the East-Berlin Kunsthochschule due to 'sociopolitical immaturity', he switched to the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste in Berlin-Weißensee in 1957. Between 1957 and 1962 baselitz continued his training at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Hann Trier became one of his teachers. In the early 60ies he published several artistic manifestos and he established a new figurative art with expressive elements - together with artists like Eugen Schönebeck or Markus Lüpertz - at the same time. Baselitz wanted to offend against fixed categories and regularities, his unpretentious painting was directed against the established ideal. In 1963 the paintings 'Die große Nacht im Eimer' [The large night in the bucket] and 'Der nackte Mann' [The nacked man], which caused a scandal, were confiscated at the gallery Werner & Katz in Berlin by the public prosecutor's office. The following actions for pornography were closed and the works were returned.

Against this background, the India ink drawing offered in our auction takes a prominent position in the oeuvre, which, at the time of making was particularly characterized by a rebellion against convention. It should be noted at this point that radical manifestos were made with the two Pandämonia writings only a short time earlier. In these writings Baselitz expresses his claims against art. This theoretic rebellion in words finds its practical echo in an artistic expression strongly geared at Tachism and Informal, just the way that Baselitz learned it from his professor Hann Trier during his studies. This expressive coinage is clearly felt in the present work in which Baselitz brings the ecstatically charged motif on paper with powerful duct, calling reminiscence of two people intimately intertwined.

In 1969, he created the first one of his typical pictures, which presents the motif head downwards. Besides painting, drawing, printing and wood sculpturing gained more and more importance. At the beginning of the 1970s the artist was well-known in Germany through numerous exhibitions. In 1977, Baselitz was appointed to the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe. From 1983 to 1988, he continued his professorship at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste in Berlin. In 1980, he designed the German pavilion for the Venice Biennale, exhibited at the documenta VII and had countless exhibitions and retrospectives in major international art forums, e.g. at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1995. In 2004 Baselitz received the 'Nobel prize for arts', the 'Praemium Imperiale' of the Japan Association. The committee justified the award of the world's highest prize for contemporary art by pointing out that for decades, Georg Baselitz has formed the international art scene with his powerful painting. [KP].