The Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz am Theaterplatz present 48 works by Georg Baselitz (*1938, Deutschbaselitz/Saxony) from the museum’s collection. In recognition of his generous support of the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, the artist was honoured at the opening of the exhibition on 16 April by his entry in the Golden Book of the City of Chemnitz.
Georg Baselitz, who celebrated his 80th birthday on 23 January 2018, has been closely associated with the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz for many years. Since 1998, 48 of the artist’s works – paintings, drawings, sketches and a sculpture dating from 1966 to 2013 – have come to the museum. Among them are the early drawing Kopf mit Lade (1966), the monumental sculpture Mondrian’s sister (1997) and 29 designs for the stage set of the opera Le Grand Macabre by György Ligeti (1923-2006), which was performed at the Chemnitz Opera in 2013.
For the first time after the acquisition with the help of the Hypo-Kulturstiftung in 2012, the museum will show four large-format woodcuts from the artist’s Remix series. These works will be supplemented by the paintings Bandit (2007) and Paint Painter (2007) from the same series. They are now on permanent loan from a private collection and can also be seen for the first time in the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz.
Already in 1998, 200 works by Georg Baselitz from the Deutsche Bank Collection were exhibited in the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz. This was followed by several group and solo presentations. In cooperation with the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and the Pinakothek der Moderne – Sammlung Moderne Kunst, the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz showed the important works of Georg Baselitz in 2003.
African collection of the artist. Its richness of form helps to decipher the work of Baselitz. Almost 100 years earlier, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, born in Chemnitz-Rottluff, had also been inspired by African art.
Georg Baselitz said of his work in 2017: “My paintings are diary entries. So I don’t need to write another diary, these are my paintings. And I don’t have to look up anything, these memories, they are burned in or stamped in, they are so concise, and I can call them up. Only sometimes it’s not necessarily possible to get back a happy time that you once had. But at least the result of it, I can recall it. It’s normal to have a biography and to have a biography as a painter. And that you live in a world that deals with art, that there is a past, maybe even a future, that there are – medially – no other possibilities than the material that you have – all this is actually an intact, existing world, which has always changed.
