On 15 February, MUNCH launches an exhibition by one of the most significant artists of our time: Georg Baselitz. Feet First is Norway’s biggest ever exhibition by the German artist. The entire 3rd floor of the museum is given over to his monumental paintings and drawings.
‘We are very proud to be able to invite our visitors to experience Georg Baselitz’s painterly, innovative and engaging artistry,´ comments MUNCH director Tone Hansen.
‘With the Feet First exhibition, the artist’s long-running relationship with Edvard Munch is explored for the first time – as well as giving us an insight into the development of an art practice that stretches across many decades.’
Georg Baselitz was born in 1938 in Hitler’s Germany, which was on the road to a world war that would leave Europe in ruins. The experience of being born in a ‘destroyed order’ has been a central theme in his art from his earliest work in the early 1960s right up to today.
Visitors can see more than 80 paintings and drawings from the early 60s to the present. You can expect a highly unusual experience, as his art can be both striking and physically direct, aggressive and at times deliberately clumsy. As he says: ‘I proceed from a state of disharmony, from ugly things… from feet that are too big.’
Georg Baselitz is best known for his upside-down images, which he began painting back in 1969. By painting a motif upside down, he opened up an alternative direction in modern art, between total abstraction and figurative depiction.
Since his debut, Baselitz has carried on an extended dialogue with both contemporary and historical art and artists. One of the most important of these is no less than Edvard Munch, especially his late self-portraits and The Scream. His relationship with Munch can be traced back to his very earliest paintings, from around 1960, and the nude motifs he was painting in the 1970s. It became even more pronounced in the early 1980s, when he created several paintings with clear reference to Munch, executed with a playful self-confidence which is typical of Georg Baselitz.
Georg Baselitz on his fascination with Edvard Munch. An interview produced by Louisiana Channel: https://www.munchmuseet.no/
