Georg Baselitz, the influential German Neo-Expressionist painter known for his emotionally charged, often violent works and his controversial statements about women artists, has died at age 88. His final paintings will be shown in the exhibition "Eroi d’Oro" at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice starting May 6. Baselitz rose to prominence with his "Heroes" series of monumental male soldiers and his signature "upside down" paintings, which forced viewers to focus on painterly gesture over representation. He was a key precursor to Germany's Neue Wilde movement and confronted Germany's World War II trauma in works that combined expressionistic brutality with Wagnerian grandeur.
Baselitz's death marks the end of an era for post-war German painting, but his legacy is deeply complicated by his 2013 statement that "women cannot paint very well," which sparked ongoing debates about sexism in the art world. His career trajectory—from being expelled from art school in East Berlin to achieving international acclaim with a Guggenheim Museum survey—reflects the broader story of German art's reckoning with history. While his influence on Neo-Expressionism and painters like the Neue Wilde is undeniable, his misogynistic views have prompted critical reassessment of his work and the "tortured male genius" myth he embodied.