Der Trommler,

Georg Baselitz, born in Deutschbaselitz in Saxony in 1938, is one of the major proponents in international contemporary art. His artistic development did not follow a straight line but has always been characterised by the painter¿s exploration of pictorial possibilities and his search for the `new image¿. His early works were motivated by an aggressively rebellious attitude directed against the socialist concept of art in former East Germany, as well as the determinant abstract art of the western world, that had been heralded as the embodiment of boundless freedom. Baselitz combined both extremes in a consciously unprettified and irritating, `dirty¿ form of painting and created his own independent position between these two poles. His `pictorial trick¿ of turning the motif upside-down gave him the possibility of drawing attention to the technique of painting itself while the subject loses its importance. Baselitz¿s output in the past few years, his so-called REMIX works, are characterised by a fascinating lightness and sovereignity. The motifs he used in the past, conditioned by his biography having lived in both East and West Germany, have been retained, but have been remixed and incorporated in a playfully free painterly style.