Georg Baselitz with the poster for his exhibition at Galerie Rudolf Springer, Berlin, 1966. Photograph: © Elke Baselitz 2024.

1938 Georg Baselitz is born on 23 January 1938 as Hans-Georg Bruno Kern in the village of Deutschbaselitz in Saxony, the second of four children to Johannes and Lieselotte Kern. His father is the village schoolteacher, and the family lives in the local school building.

1939 Following the outbreak of the Second World War, his father is conscripted into the army, returning home infrequently.

1945 With the end of the war approaching, the area is threatened by the advancing Soviet army. Lieselotte Kern and her – by then – three children briefly take refuge near Dresden, and when they return, they settle into an occupied country. Johannes Kern is interned after returning from the war, and banned from teaching. His wife fully takes over his duties.

1946 Hans-Georg assists wildlife photographer Helmut Drechsler as a guide, an influential experience for his future art. He immerses himself in books and prints in the school library and explores the countryside freely.

ca. 1948 He has an early, significant encounter with art: ‘One day, I must have been about ten, I saw an old man, perfectly round and with a bald head, settling down with a little outdoor easel in front of these two oaks and starting to paint them on a small wood panel with a fine brush, in the manner of New Objectivity. To me this was an unbelievable, devilish operation. I was so fascinated by the mismatch between the painter and the dramatic motif that I tried to do the same thing. It turned out to be a rather laborious failure. But I never forgot that first impression.’

1950 The family relocates to Kamenz, where Hans-Georg attends middle school and later the Lessing-Gymnasium.

ca. 1953 He begins painting more seriously, exploring portraits, wildlife studies, landscapes, and even religious themes. He is encouraged by his uncle Wilhelm, a clergyman in Dresden with an interest in art, who takes him to art museums and introduces him to works by local nineteenth-century painter Ferdinand von Rayski. 

1955 Hans-Georg enrols in evening classes for drawing and painting, and applies to the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, but is rejected.

1956 Although accepted to a school of forestry in Tharandt, he also applies to the Academy of Fine and Applied Arts in the East Berlin district of Weißensee. He is accepted, and studies painting under the Socialist Realist painter Walter Womacka and the more formalist Herbert Behrens-Hangeler. He befriends the Dresden-based Ralf Winkler, later known as A. R. Penck, and both draw inspiration from Pablo Picasso for their socialist outlook on modern art.

1957 Hans-Georg, along with his friend Peter Graf, spends his vacation painting numerous works in a Cubist style, deviating from the collective combine work undertaken by his peers. This leads to his suspension from Weißensee for so-called ‘socio-political immaturity’. Rather than fulfilling a year-long coal-mining collective obligation for reinstatement, he instead successfully applies to the Academy of Art in the Charlottenburg district of West Berlin. There, he enters the class of Hann Trier, an Informal painter. Abstraction is taught in the West, and he tries his best to immerse himself into the style. He makes friends with Eugen Schönebeck, who shares a similar background, as well as Peter Klasen and Benjamin Katz.

1958 He permanently relocates to West Berlin three years before the construction of the Berlin Wall, obtaining West-German citizenship. Residing near the Ku’damm, he sustains himself with various manual labour jobs. He shares this life with fellow student Elke Kretzschmar, originally from Dresden, who studies graphic design. At the academy, they encounter the groundbreaking exhibition Die neue amerikanische Malerei [ The New American Painting], where works by Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, and Philip Guston are shown alongside a Jackson Pollock retrospective. He later reflects on the impact of seeing Pollock’s paintings for the first time, describing the shock of their large size. He notes that despite his significant presence in the exhibition and the admiration for his work, Pollock had little influence at the academy, especially among younger students. Instead, Willem de Kooning’s paintings, particularly his expressive portraits of women with exaggerated facial features, were more influential due to their European origins and more easily understandable style of depiction.

1959 Hans-Georg and Elke travel with fellow students to II. documenta in Kassel, an exhibition focusing on international abstraction after 1945 and early Modernist forebears.

1960 The couple hitchhike to Amsterdam, where they visit the Stedelijk Museum, encountering Chaïm Soutine’s Carcass of Beef from 1925 for the first time. He abandons pure abstract painting to begin a series of heads, inspired by Ferdinand von Rayski’s self-portraits, making facial features recede behind the brushstrokes. The series includes his first real portrait painting, Win. D., of his friend, the artist Winfried Dierske.

1961 Georg and Elke travel to Paris, exploring the Musée Gustave Moreau and encountering works by Jean Fautrier, Francis Picabia, and Henri Michaux. His own series of darkly abstracted heads loosely recalls the work of Fautrier. Back in Berlin, he establishes the name Georg Baselitz, after his place of birth, and collaborates with Eugen Schönebeck on an exhibition in a condemned building at Schaperstraße 22. The duo co-author their first ‘Pandämonisches Manifest’ [‘Pandemonic Manifesto’] for the occasion, expressing their unconventional and unapologetic attitude towards contemporary art. The text details a fascination with painting flesh that anticipates the artist’s future work, beyond the heads and severed feet he is currently painting.

1962 Baselitz and Schönebeck release their second ‘Pandemonic Manifesto’. His paintings grow darker in mood; incorporating grey, earthy tones, and featuring anamorphic figures, body parts, and decomposing flesh. He marries Elke, and their son Daniel is born. They settle in Charlottenburg. He becomes a master student of Hann Trier and forms a friendship with the art dealer Michael Werner.

1963 He graduates from the Academy of Art and holds his first solo exhibition in the newly opened Galerie Werner & Katz in Berlin in October. The exhibition sparks controversy, and is labelled as pornographic by the Berlin tabloid press. Police intervention leads to the exhibition’s closure and reopening, only to be closed again. Two paintings, Die große Nacht im Eimer [The Big Night Down the Drain] and Der nackte Mann [The Naked Man], are seized by the Department of Public Prosecution for alleged indecency. The paintings are eventually returned in 1965, following an obscenity trial, but both the gallerists and the artist are fined. While the scandal attracts large crowds, no sales are made, leaving Baselitz and his young family facing financial difficulties. He publishes a manifesto-like letter titled ‘Lieber Herr W.!’ [ ‘Dear Mr W.!’ ], describing his creative process and expressing his frustration. He completes his series of P.D. Füße [P.D. Feet], which depicts severed body parts with a psychologically charged tone, reminiscent of Théodore Géricault’s studies. 

1964 Invited to the print workshop at Schloss Wolfsburg, Baselitz creates his first prints in the spring. At the 1. Orthodoxer Salon [1st Orthodox Salon] at Michael Werner’s gallery in Berlin, he shows the monumental painting Oberon, featuring brightly lit, clean-shaven, elongated heads in a worm’s-eye view. His newer works incorporate pink and yellow hues, juxtaposing anamorphic forms with motifs such as sheep, ducks, tree trunks, or crosses in fragments of pastoral landscapes.

1965 He spends a six-month scholarship at the Villa Romana in Florence, immersing himself in Renaissance art and collecting Mannerist prints. His works evolve to focus on central figures, transitioning into a series known as Helden [Heroes] or Neue Typen [New Types], depicting partisan-like characters in often tattered uniforms and vague insignia, in landscapes evoking the aftermath of a battle. 

1966 For his exhibition at Galerie Rudolf Springer in Berlin, Baselitz publishes the manifesto ‘Warum das Bild‚ “Die großen Freunde” ein gutes Bild ist!’ [‘Why the Painting The Great Friends Is a Good Picture!’]. This text elaborates on this central work from the Helden series, emphasising its complexity and ambiguity, and rejecting what he considers to be conventional criteria and content for ‘a good picture’. He ends with: ‘The painting is devoid of all doubts. The painter, in full responsibility, has held a social parade.’ He welcomes his second son, Anton, and the family relocates to rural Osthofen near Worms in Rhineland-Palatinate. He begins fracturing the picture space of the Helden, often in three horizontal layers. He also creates his first woodcuts.

1967–1968 He develops these Frakturbilder [Fracture Pictures] by increasingly opening up the picture space so that dogs, woodworkers, or cows are shown sideways or even partly upside down, with some of the figures torn into disintegrating parts. As painting sales are still slow, Elke opens a fashion boutique in Worms, which will support the family financially in the coming years.

1969 In one of his last Frakturbilder, Der Mann am Baum [The Man at the Tree], a man stands on his head while the tree is still rendered right side up. Then with Der Wald auf dem Kopf [The Wood on Its Head], Baselitz paints his first upside-down picture. He continues with portraits of friends and acquaintances, working from photographs, in which all motifs are painted upside-down, executed in a lighter and more austere style than his earlier works. He later explains the new strategy: ‘If you want to stop constantly inventing new motifs, but still want to go on painting pictures, then turning the motif upside down is the most obvious option. The hierarchy of sky above and ground down below is in any case only a pact that we have admittedly got used to but that one absolutely doesn’t have to believe in. Ultimately, all I’m interested in is being able to go on painting pictures.’

1972 He begins painting with his fingers in various series depicting upside-down wood groves, eagles in flight, and nude portraits of himself and his wife. He is intrigued by the smooth texture this technique produces, and by using his fingers to rub the paint into the pores of the canvas, achieves a surface devoid of visible texture. His work between 1962-1972 is exhibited at the Kunstverein in Hamburg, and Baselitz participates in documenta 5 in Kassel. He rents an old factory hall in Musbach, near Freudenstadt in Baden, as his new studio.

1975 Baselitz acquires Schloss Derneburg near Hildesheim in Lower Saxony. He begins renovating the premises for both living and studio spaces. In the autumn he makes a first trip to New York, travelling back via Brazil, where he takes part in the São Paulo Biennial.

1976 He establishes a second studio in Florence, Italy. He shifts from vibrantly coloured and gestural motifs to black-and-white contrast with heavy impasto in his upside-down paintings, using only streaks of strong colours. While the motifs are still recognisable, the work is clearly more abstracted. Retrospectives of his work are held at the Kunsthalle in Bern, the Galerieverein and Staatsgalerie moderner Kunst in Munich, and the Kunsthalle in Cologne.

1977 Baselitz starts working on large-format linocuts and diptych paintings on plywood. He takes up a professorship at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe until 1983. Along with Gerhard Richter and Markus Lüpertz, he withdraws his work from documenta 6, in protest against A. R. Penck being redlined and bowing out due to political pressure from the GDR, whose artists are included in the exhibition for the first time. Following his earlier fascination with the subject, he now begins to seriously collect African art, focusing on wooden figures by the Teke and Songye peoples of the Congo.

1979 He delivers a lecture titled ‘Vier Wände und Oberlicht, oder besser kein Bild an die Wand’ [‘Four Walls and Skylight, or Rather No Picture on the Wall at All’] at the Dortmund Architekturtage, arguing for purely functional exhibition architecture over representative purposes in museums. He begins experimenting with wood sculpture, aiming to avoid manual dexterity, artistic elegance, and construction in his work.

1980 His first completed sculpture, Modell für eine Skulptur [Model for a Sculpture], is shown in the German Pavilion of the Venice Biennale alongside works by Anselm Kiefer. The seated figure, with legs still encased in the trunk and torso leaning backward, is roughly hewn from limewood and partly painted. It provokes strong reactions by the German-speaking press, some critics even detecting similarities to a Nazi salute in the outstretched arm.

1981 He works on two concurrent series: Orangenesser [Orange Eater], playful compositions depicting figures biting into the red and yellow circle of an orange, and Trinker [Drinker], featuring figures drinking from glasses or with bottles. He participates in the exhibition A New Spirit in Painting at the Royal Academy in London, signalling the return of this well-worn medium into critical favour. He holds his first solo shows in New York at the Xavier Fourcade and Brooke Alexander galleries, and moves his Italian studio from Florence to Castiglion Fiorentino near Arezzo.

1982 Baselitz gains international recognition as a major artist, with critics praising the metaphysical resonance, highly charged symbolic focus, and animated energy in his paintings. He is referred to in the New York Times as ‘[...] one of the most interesting painters to emerge from Germany – and from Europe generally – in the last decade.’ He holds exhibitions at galleries in Chicago, London, and New York, and participates in documenta 7 in Kassel and the Zeitgeist exhibition in Berlin. He focuses intensely on wood sculptures and on paintings that include references to Edvard Munch’s self-portraits, as well as compositions of figures interacting with abstract patterns.

1983 He accepts a professorship at the Berlin University of the Arts and completes the two large compositions, Nachtessen in Dresden [Supper in Dresden] and Der Brückechor [The Brücke Choir], signalling a new appreciation of the German Expressionist tradition. He begins a series featuring Christian motifs, with a colour scheme often inspired by Piero della Francesca.

1985 He lectures at academies in Amsterdam, London, and Paris, questioning the role of painters in contemporary society. He reflects on whether artists still depict universal concepts such as hunger, freedom, and love in their work, suggesting that these themes may have been abandoned in favour of more personal or abstract expressions.

1986 He completes Pastorale – Die Nacht [Pastoral – The Night] and Pastorale – Der Tag [Pastoral – The Day], paintings characterised by their collage-like combination of different motifs, showing the same spatial freedom as his earlier Fraktur paintings. He receives the Kaiserring award from the city of Goslar.

1987 He begins a series of imaginary portraits and female nudes that are gesturally simplified and range between the vulnerable and the caricatural. The figures are often framed by dark backgrounds or grid-like structures resembling brick walls. Baselitz moves his Italian studio to Imperia on the Ligurian Riviera. He is appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture.

1988 He terminates his professorship at the Berlin University of the Arts due to the appointment of a painter formerly holding official positions in GDR academies. In a lengthy conversation with Heinz Peter Schwerfel, he describes the process of painting his recent works, which involves overpainting and completely changing or adding to the motifs daily, or even hourly, according to a plan.

1989 The fall of the Berlin Wall, which in the coming year will lead to German reunification, prompts him to reflect on German history, and he composes the 20-part painting cycle ’45, referencing the end of the war. He also works on the sculpture group Dresdner Frauen [Women of Dresden], evoking the firebombing of Dresden: wooden busts painted bright yellow, with rough-hewn faces like collections of craters. He introduces the Volkstanz [Folk Dance] series of large canvases with rhythmic compositions.

1990 His new canvases feature open compositions with floating colour spots on a black or white ground, overlaying a roughly sketched figure. He publishes Malelade, an artist’s book of poems and etchings. A retrospective of his work is held at the Kunsthaus Zürich, organised by Harald Szeemann.

1991 He starts painting on the floor with the series Bildübereins [Picture Over One], a series continued over the next four years, with evolving compositions often including figures hovering sideways on a picture ground.

1992 He delivers the lecture ‘Purzelbäume sind auch Bewegung und noch dazu macht es Spaß’ [‘Somersaults Are Also Movement, and They’re Fun Too’] at the Kammerspiele in Munich, discussing his experiences as a German painter, as well as his artistic process: ‘Germany and homeland are concepts – also more than that. It’s the place I didn’t have to decide on; I didn’t choose it. Whether the prevailing circumstances are good or bad, I can adjust.’ He executes the stage design for Harrison Birtwistle’s opera Punch and Judy at the Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam, and returns to his professorship at the Berlin University of the Arts, where he will remain until 2003.

1995 His first US retrospective opens at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

1996 Baselitz focuses on painting family members, a series he had begun the previous year. Having left for West Germany in the late 1950s, Baselitz has only been fully reunited with his parents and siblings after German reunification in 1990. In these works, based on old photographs, he uses a new palette with vibrant violet and green hues. Now his engagement with his past also includes reading up on GDR state security files (‘Stasi Akten’), which are made available to the public, and he reflects on the surveillance he endured in East Germany.

1997 Building on the style of his family portraits, Baselitz creates airy compositions reminiscent of reverse-glass painting, incorporating elements of folk art.

1998 He expands his series from the previous year, adding new figures including a boy resting head down and a woman standing near an abyss, inspired by Caspar David Friedrich’s prints. These paintings feature blank circles marking the spots where paint cans were placed and painted around as he worked his canvas on the floor, interrupting the colour flow and becoming part of the composition. He contributes two monumental canvases from this series to the renovated Reichstag building in Berlin. He begins the Russenbilder [Russian Pictures], which take up famous works of propaganda art in the Socialist Realist style.

1999 He continues his Russenbilder series, using a stamping technique reminiscent of Pointillism, alongside a series depicting dogs in a portrait-like manner. He becomes an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

2000 Many of his paintings are now executed on a white ground with light, drawing-like lines of colour. The motifs in his works revisit drawings from his school days, now transformed by artistic concepts and theories by artists ranging from Giuseppe Arcimboldo to Kazimir Malevich and Pablo Picasso.

2001 He writes a short text titled ‘Was es ist’ [‘What It Is’], reflecting on how he still uses old motifs going back to his childhood discoveries of nature and art around Kamenz.

2002 He is appointed Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in Paris. Baselitz adopts the tondo format for a series of paintings that includes portraits of Elke and of himself, wearing shorts, undershirt, and a cap.

2003 He creates the wood sculpture Meine neue Mütze [My New Cap], featuring the same artist figure with cap and shorts, more than three metres high. It is joined by its companion portrait of Elke, titled Frau Ultramarin [Mrs Ultramarine], the following year.

2004 He incorporates the cap labelled ‘ZERO’ into new self-portraits, some of these are painted as negatives in black and white. He later works on a series of landscapes showing upside-down white trees against a black void, touched sparingly with vivid colours. He receives the Praemium Imperiale for painting, a Japanese lifetime achievement award.

2005 Die große Nacht im Eimer (Remix) is the first in a lengthy Remix series in which Baselitz revisits his past works. He describes the work as being an entirely new painting, distinct from the original, and states that the series would not be possible without a combination of spontaneity and a well-conceived plan.

2006 Baselitz continues work on the Remix paintings, which are exhibited at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich and later at the Albertina in Vienna, receiving widespread acclaim. He and Elke leave Schloss Derneburg, having already sold their art collection and later the building itself to the American collector Andrew Hall, who transforms it into a museum.

2007 The couple relocates to the Ammersee in Bavaria, settling into a newly built house and studio on the banks of the lake. The Royal Academy of Arts in London stages the biggest retrospective of Baselitz’s works to date, with a large number of Remix paintings closing the show.

2008 He paints the series Frau Lenin und die Nachtigall [Mrs Lenin and the Nightingale], depicting Lenin disguised in a skirt and heels, with Stalin, who loved to sing, impersonating a nightingale. The series, acquired by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, alternates between vibrant and subdued colour compositions.

2009 He makes Volk Ding Zero–Folk Thing Zero, a three-metre-high seated figure in shorts and cap, painted blue, carved from wood and then also cast in bronze.

2010 His paintings feature upside-down seated figures violently cut off by a drippy edge of black paint. The same edge appears as a compositional device in his Remix paintings.

2011 He begins work on more sculptures cast from wood models in patinated bronze to mimic the matte black appearance of coal. The Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris hosts the major retrospective, Baselitz Sculpteur.

2012 He returns to his negative paintings; this time painted from photos colour-reversed on a computer.

2013 He makes the patinated bronze sculpture Louise Fuller, the burnt appearance of which is contradicted by playful rings around the body, reminiscent of hula-hoops. He produces ‘almost’ black paintings and a series of homages to Willem de Kooning titled Willem raucht nicht mehr [Farewell Bill]. The self-portraits are stylistically inspired by the memory of Baselitz’s early encounter with de Kooning’s work while he was a student. 

2014 His bronze sculpture Winterschlaf [Winter Sleep] depicts a reclining form, reminiscent of charred logs. The painting series Avignon, a title referring to Picasso’s late work controversially shown in 1970 and 1973 at the Palais des Papes, involves upside-down nude self-portraits on a black ground, and is shown at the Venice Biennale the following year.

2015 He continues painting ghostly shimmering bodies or heads on a dark background. Particularly in his paintings of couples, the focus is on the ageing body and mortality.

2016 Georg Baselitz: Die Helden [The Heroes] opens at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main. Comprising paintings and drawings from the 1965–1966 series, the exhibition travels to Stockholm, Rome, and Bilbao.

2018 Celebrating his eightieth birthday, Baselitz is honoured with retrospectives and exhibitions at the Fondation Beyeler, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, among others. He creates the extensive Devotion series based on self-portraits of fellow artists that hold special significance for him. He works on the set design for Richard Wagner’s Parsifal at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. The scenery comprises motifs from different phases of his work, from the Helden figures, an upside-down forest, and sculptures, to his current paintings of ageing bodies.

2019 He focuses on bodies and then on single hands, sometimes in grey but mostly in golden tones. He uses a transfer technique to produce vague, unsettling forms reminiscent of imprints and reflects on the historical significance of hands in art and culture. He becomes the first living artist to have an exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice.

2020 In autumn, he develops the new series Springtime, inspired by Dada collage artist Hannah Höch. He incorporates real nylon stockings into some of the paintings, which he collages over the legs – and sometimes arms – of his figures. Since the figures are upside down, the stockings acquire almost fetishistic relevance on the canvas.

2021 A major retrospective opens at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In his initiation to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Baselitz takes over the chair of the late Polish film director Andrzej Wajda. Meanwhile, a nine-metre version of his 2015 bronze sculpture Zero Dom [Zero Dome] is installed in front of the Institut de France.

2022 He continues to explore collage in painting, taking up his earlier Volkstanz compositions, and creates the monumental The Painter in His Bed. Six Decades of Drawings opens at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York, which is later shown at the Albertina in Vienna, celebrating a comprehensive gift from the artist’s family. Both exhibitions present a retrospective of his artistic development and highlight the central role drawing plays in his practice. 

2023 The series A Confession of My Sins and Adler barfuß [Eagle Barefoot] are created throughout the year. To mark his eighty-fifth birthday, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna shows a dialogue with masterpieces from their collection in the exhibition titled Nackte Meister [Naked Masters]. Sculptures 2011-2015, a first ever overview exhibition of his bronze cast maquettes, opens at the Serpentine Galleries, in London.

2024 Georg Baselitz lives and works at the Ammersee (Bavaria, Germany), near Salzburg (Austria) and in Imperia (Italy).

* Adapted from the original published in Georg Baselitz, ed. Hans Werner Holzwarth (TASCHEN, 2021).