Due to his outstanding creation, which repeatedly found new artistic ways to challenge and at the same time continue art-historical traditions since the 1960s, Georg Baselitz is considered one of the most prominent representatives of German contemporary art. With his powerful representational works, he violated established categories and time and again took up the fight against our traditional concept of art. In 1963, Baselitz became famous overnight with his first major scandal in the course of a solo exhibition at Galerie Werner & Katz in Berlin: Above all, the two paintings "Die große Nacht im Eimer" (The Big Night in the Bucket, 1962) and "Der nackte Mann" (The Naked Man, 1962), which shows a haggard male nude with an over-sized penis lying dead in a grave-like hole, triggered the provocation. A shocking painting that refers to the art-historical tradition of depictions of the corpse of Christ, while it also allows for association of images of prisoners of Nazi concentration camps, images from a time that was largely suppressed in post-war Germany. Both paintings were confiscated by the public prosecutor's office on charges of pornography. The following day, the daily BZ wrote: "It's a scandal the likes of which hasn't happened in Berlin since the end of the war."

In 1969 Baselitz created the first painting in which he turned the motif upside-down, "Der Wald auf dem Kopf" (The Forest Upside-Down, Museum Ludwig, Cologne). Once again, Baselitz radically challenges our traditional viewing habits. This bold step, which ultimately became Baselitz' artistic trademark in an art world still dominated by abstraction, not only earned him a permanent place in art history, but was also a powerful act of liberation. "The act of painting emancipates itself from the depiction, from the representation, and allows the works to appear both representational and non-representational at the same time." (Toni Stoss, in: Georg Baselitz, Gemälde und Skulpturen 1960-2008, p. 8). This decisive step in Baselitz' work was also based on a historic model, because the motif of "Der Wald auf dem Kopf" was influenced by the painting "Wermsdorfer Wald" by Ferdinand von Rayski from 1859, on display at the Dresden Gemäldegalerie. And as early as in 1967/68, Baselitz tied a forest worker upside-down to a tree in the painting of the same name (Museum of Modern Art, New York), thus creating a reminiscence of the martyrdom of the Apostle Peter, who was crucified upside down, as has been handed down in numerous paintings and prints .

Since 1965, Baselitz has been collecting prints, primarily from Renaissance, Mannerism and Baroque, their wealth of inventiveness satisfies his immeasurable thirst for something new. In these works Baselitz encounters a variety of pictorial themes, some of which have almost been forgotten, but which have shaped our collective memory for a long time and which he brings back to the present day through decontextualization and alienation. In this way, his paintings generate an enigmatic, associative pictorial content that can never be fully fathomed right away. Accordingly, the present work with the meaningful title "Zwilling I"(Twin I) is particularly fascinating for its vast range of associations that give the canvas a mysterious aura despite its striking motifs. Apparently weightless, a naked baby Jesus flies through an undefined space and casts his dark shadow on the Earth. "Zwilling I" is not only inspiring for its extremely powerful representational painting manner, it is also a kind of visual catalyst for an associative intellectual game that revolves around fundamental questions of our existence. It is about the birth of Christ, questions about the origin of human life and the limits of our earthly existence. Where do we come from, where are we going? What is the meaning of our supposedly unique existence? "Zwilling I" also refers to a scientific debate of the 2000s that was closely intertwined with these existential questions: the possibilities and limits of genetic cloning, a complex topic in which religious concepts of creation, scientific progress and fundamental ethical questions directly collide. [JS]