Georg Baselitz returns to White Cube Bermondsey for the first time in eight years
‘In a sense, what painters really do when they paint is paint a situation that they are in: they paint actions.’ — GEORG BASELITZ
Georg Baselitz marks his return to White Cube Bermondsey for the first time in eight years with the solo exhibition ‘A Confession of My Sins’. Comprising a large body of new work produced during an intensive year in the studio, the exhibition features large-scale paintings and a selection of works on paper in which the artist, now 86, surveys the past six and a half decades of his practice.
From the vantage point of old age, Baselitz reflects upon a lifetime of lived experience and artistic invention, paying homage to key inspirations, motifs and subject matter, as well as unearthing pictorial references from his youth. ‘I’ve got my early childhood drawings of eagles, stags, deer, dogs and so on in folders,’ Baselitz remarks. ‘Every now and then I look at them, and I think was it a good time, was it a bad time?
Georg Baselitz initiated his celebrated practice of inverted painting in 1969, in an effort to emphasise the abstract qualities of his compositions while retaining the psychological charge of their figurative subject matter. Key themes in his recent paintings include memory-based portraits of himself and his wife Elke, his own ageing process and allusions to artists he admires. Throughout his career, the artist has also made drawings and prints as a separate, independent practice.
Publication: Georg Baselitz 'A Confession of My Sins' (2024)
Published to coincide with Georg Baselitz’s major solo exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey (April – June 2024), this catalogue features the artist’s latest body of work that reviews the past six and half decades of his practice. Created from a process of revisitation and reinvention, Baselitz’s new paintings range from portraits of himself and his wife Elke to an array of different animals, citing the formative influence of painters including James McNeill Whistler, Pablo Picasso and Willem de Kooning. Exhibition price: £60 (RRP £70)
Further Information: Georg Baselitz, Bermondsey (2024) | White Cube