Neo-Expressionism: An Affirmation of the Redemptive Power of Art

Georg Baselitz - Man of Faith - 1983 - Oil on canvas - 97 1/2 x 78 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYMany artists have practiced and revived aspects of the original Expressionist movement, as it existed at its peak at the beginning of the twentieth century. 

The most famous return to Expressionism was inaugurated by Georg Baselitz (born 1938) who led a revival that dominated German art in the 1970s. By the 1980s, this resurgence had become part of an international return to the sensuousness of painting - and away from the stylistically cool, distant sparseness of Minimalism and Conceptualism. Baselitz was enormously influential in showing a generation of German artists how they might come to terms with issues of art and national identity in the wake of the Second World War.. Briefly trained in the officially sanctioned social realism of Communist East Berlin, he soon moved to West Berlin, and encountered abstract art. Ultimately, however, he was to reject both options. While others turned to Conceptual Art, Pop Art, and Arte Povera, Baselitz revived the German Expressionism that had been denounced by the Nazis, and returned the human figure to a central position in painting. The figures in his art often appear upside-down.

Baselitz has always been influential and controversial. "I begin with an idea, but as I work, the picture takes over. Then there is the struggle between the idea I preconceived... and the picture that fights for its own life.”

I’ll be teaching a single-session class on Neo-Expressionism THIS Thursday (11/9), at the Larchmont Temple. Click HERE to register.