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Georg BASELITZ

Germany born 1938


Meissener Waldarbeiter
[Meissen woodmen] 1969
Germany
Painting, oil on canvas
Primary Insc: signed and dated l.r., brown oil, "G Baselitz 69", inscribed verso c.r., oil crayon, "G Baselitz 1969 / Meissener Waldarbeiter."
250.0 h x 198.0 w cm
Purchased 1983
Accession No: NGA 83.3704
Subject: Art style: Neo-expressionism
© 1969, Georg Baselitz
Provenance:
  • the artist;
  • from whom bought through Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, by the Australian National Gallery, September 1983

Meissen woodmen 1969 is one of five similarly sized paintings using woodmen as the subject that were painted by Baselitz between 1967 and 1969. The Gallery's work, painted in 1969, is the last of this series of related paintings and was made just before Baselitz began to invert his images.

The woodman developed from 'der neuer Typ' (the new man), the hero figure that appeared in Baselitz's works at the time he was working at the Villa Romana in Italy in 1965. This figure combines elements taken from Mannerist prints that Baselitz collected, especially those showing the various professions, with the heroic iconography of social realism; the phrase 'der neuer Typ', used in the title of a number of works of this period, comes from the literature of the Russian Revolution. The rustic setting for these hero figures may derive from Baselitz's move, in 1966, to the small village of Osthofen, near Worms, where he worked in relative isolation.

Concurrent with the development of this type of imagery, Baselitz initiated ways of dividing the image to undermine the narrative implication of his motifs while not altogether eliminating them. The works of 1967-69 divided in this manner are known as 'fracture' paintings. The earliest of these paintings are fractured by a single division usually cutting the image in two. In later works the fractures become progressively more complex, climaxing in the kind of shattered mosaic that can be seen in the Gallery's painting.

According to Detlev Gretenkort, Baselitz's secretary, the reference to the East German town of Meissen in the title of the painting is one of a number of references in the artist's works to Saxony, the area where Baselitz was raised and now lives, and is without social or political import.1

The Gallery owns a second, later, painting by Baselitz: St Michael 1983.

Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.385.

  1. Detlev Gretenkort, correspondence with the Gallery, 5 November 1986.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2010