Georg Baselitz: Springtime

Springtime documents the moment an eighty-three-year-old Baselitz let collage into his painting for the first time, gluing pairs of nylon stockings onto canvas and working over and around their diaphanous forms in white, black, and gold.

The book was published for the exhibition of the same name at Gagosian, 555 West 24th Street, New York, May 4–June 12, 2021, whose title was meant to herald a reawakening from the constraints of the pandemic much as Dada emerged from the First World War. Across 106 pages it reproduces the new paintings alongside photography of the works in progress in the artist's German studio, with texts by Baselitz himself and the French art historian Eric Darragon. In some canvases the stocking-figures stand distinct from their grounds; in others the hosiery is gone and only its printed impression remains. The volume was designed by Purtill Family Business, Los Angeles.

Baselitz (born 1938 in Deutschbaselitz, Saxony) has inverted his motifs since 1969 as a way of forcing attention onto paint rather than subject, and his Heroes, Fracture paintings, and carved wood sculpture have shaped postwar German art for six decades. The New York show coincided with an exhibition of new work at the Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Venice.