Baselitz's Career Bookended in Transatlantic Shows

Georg Baselitz had all bases covered before his death this year. He had a show in Venice, which closed this week, another opening in London next month and a third planned for New York in November.

Thaddaeus Ropac brings the artist’s formative Hero Paintings from the 1960s to London in time for Frieze, and a few weeks later the German artist’s final paintings and sculpture will go on show at Gagosian in New York.

Curated by Richard Calvocoressi, the Gagosian show titled Meine Schule (My School) will include two paintings that were inspired by the schoolhouse in Saxony where the artist’s father was a teacher and he was a pupil. It was also the building where the family lived during the Nazi era and WW2.

The artist's last completed bronze, Strawinsky (Stravinsky, 2026), is based on the artist’s marionette and set designs for a 2025 production of Igor Stravinsky’s Faustian melodrama The Soldier’s Tale.

Ropac's Baselitz show is the first in the UK dedicated to his Hero Paintings from 1965–66, created during a period of intense productivity when the artist was 27 years old. He once said: "They’re not heroes swinging their fists, they look broken, destroyed, ragged, tattered. And that’s how I wanted them."

Thaddaeus Ropac presents Georg Baselitz: The Heroes 1965–66, October 13 - December 18, in London Gagosian presents Georg Baselitz: Meine Schule, November 12 - January 23, 2027, in New York