Georg Baselitz, one of Germany's most significant post-war artists, has died at age 88. Born Hans-Georg Kern in 1938, he grew up in Nazi-era Saxony and later rejected his father's ideology, fleeing to West Berlin in 1957. Known for his provocative, expressionist works and signature upside-down paintings, Baselitz challenged artistic conventions with brutalist techniques—attacking wood with chainsaws and axes—and created scandalous pieces like "Die große Nacht im Eimer" (1962–1963), which was banned from exhibition. His career included major retrospectives at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2011) and Centre Pompidou (2021), and commissions for the Reichstag.
Baselitz's death marks the end of an era for German art that grappled directly with the nation's Nazi past. His work, which often explored themes of history, trauma, and the essence of painting, influenced generations of artists and sparked ongoing debates about transgression and artistic freedom. His legacy as a "brutal" artist who rejected abstraction for a raw, figurative expressionism cements his place as a pivotal figure in 20th-century art, with his upside-down paintings remaining a powerful symbol of his quest to strip imagery of narrative and find pure pictorial reality.