Gallery of Contemporary Art Georg Baselitz: Bildelf

Bildelf This painting is one of a series of large-format paintings dating from 1991 onwards. Baselitz numbered the paintings in the series chronologically, and this number also appears in the title (Bildelf = Picture Eleven). In this cycle Baselitz attempts to explore his previous work in retrospect, "revisiting my paintings' past", as he describes it. Baselitz maintains that in the new works one can find "just about all the methods I have used over the years", likewise the motifs and themes. Bildelf has a geometric base of red and white squares arranged alternately in a chessboard-like pattern, upon which lies a figure made of painted black lines, a reference to the "Heldenbilder" (Hero Paintings) of the 1960s. The green bars superimposed on the figure recall the fractures which characterized the paintings of the period. Baselitz painted this work, and the others in the series, on the studio floor. There is a connection here to Jackson Pollock's 'drip' paintings, however, unilke Pollock, Baselitz takes the idea of being 'in the picture' quite literally; time and again one finds his shoeprints on the canvases. For Bildelf Baselitz climbed into a tub of green paint with his shoes on and then 'walked' the four green bars. The figure too was painted not with a brush, but with his fingers. This technique also refers back to Baselitz' earlier works, paintings he made in the 1970s which bore the words Finger Painting in the title.

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