In his studio on Lake Ammersee in Upper Bavaria, the 87-year-old Georg Baselitz spreads his canvases out on the floor, a way of working he has used for years. On them, he paints full body figures, often two side by side but sometimes a single body, alone and lost in space.
The next stage, now presented for the first time, is new. (...) Baselitz marks the canvas’s surface with the swirling parallel tracks of his wheelchair. With his walking aid, he tap-tap-taps more circular daubs of paint along the edges of the picture plane. As the artist tracks these gyrating lines around and through the human figures on the canvases—depictions of his wife, Elke, and sometimes the two of them alongside one another—we get the anatomical impression of muscles and veins within their torsos.
The 22 large-format paintings made using this inventive approach (all are over three metres wide), as well as 14 ink-on-paper drawings and the artist’s first sculptural work in over ten years make up Baselitz’s exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac in Pantin, Paris (until 26 July). The exhibition’s curious title, Ein Bein von Manet aus Paris (or ‘A leg by Manet from Paris’), references Baselitz’s interest in anatomy and limbs, especially hands and feet, as well as the tradition of 19th-century Parisian painting. [...]
The artist’s restlessness is inspiring, but for Baselitz it is merely a continuation of his extensive work on the contortions of the body that came before. “You could also just say,” he concludes, “where there’s a will, there’s a way”.
