Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me! – Alfred, Lord Tennyson

While we slept through inclement weather in my home city of Brisbane, the world of fine arts lost one of its prominent colleagues of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, when the highly acclaimed German artist George Baselitz quietly left this tempestuous world, and in doing so left behind a legacy of a glorious collection of artwork, influenced by his experiences of living through the horror of World War II and then the drudgery of communist controlled East Germany. Yes, as the playwright Robert Bolt wrote in A Man for All Seasons, “Death. Comes for us all; yes, even for kings, it comes.” Yet the passing of any person is difficult, and when it is one of the modern greats of the world of fine arts, there is a heart that bleeds in all humanity, for an eminent flame has gone out. Still, fear not, for his light, for many centuries still to come will illuminate the galleries where his preeminent artworks will hang.

Born in 1938, Georg 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 rejected both styles. While others turned to Conceptual art, Pop, and Arte Povera, Baselitz revived German Expressionism, which had been denounced by the Nazis, and returned the human figure to a central position in painting. From 1969, he painted his subjects upside down in an effort to overcome the representational, content-driven character of his earlier work and stress the artifice of painting. Drawing from a myriad of influences, including Soviet-era illustration, the Mannerist period, and African sculpture, he developed his own distinct artistic expression. Controversial when his works first gained notoriety in 1963, and contentious nearly two decades later when his artistic flair was expressed in sculpture, George Baselitz inspired a revival of Neo-Expressionist painting in Germany in the 1970s, and his example encouraged many more who took up similar styles both in Europe and the United States from the 1980s and thereafter. Yet now is not the time to scribble about his brilliance. Instead, it is time to let some of his artwork speak on his behalf:

Adieu -1982

Alte Elisabeth – 2010

Rebel – 1965

The Crowning with Thorns – 1983

And so, as the wick of the candle still smolders, while the light which emanates from the flame that once burned bright forever travels through that cosmic gallery of ancient imagery, no more canvases will be inflamed with his majestic delights. The world of fine arts sheds a tear for his passing, and his preeminence will never be diminished, for there will be no surpassing.