Georg Baselitz

Georg Baselitz was a German-Austrian painter, sculptor and graphic artist. In the 1960s he became well known for his figurative, expressive paintings. In 1969 he began painting his subjects upside down in an effort to overcome the representational, content-driven character of his earlier work and stress the artifice of painting, which would become a defining feature of his later work. Drawing from myriad influences, including Socialist Realism, Mannerism, and African sculpture, he developed his own, distinct artistic language.