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Georg Baselitz
Ludwig Richter auf dem Weg zur Arbeit (Ludwig Richter on His Way to Work), 1965

Artwork Info

Artwork title
Ludwig Richter auf dem Weg zur Arbeit (Ludwig Richter on His Way to Work)
Artist name
Georg Baselitz
Date created
1965
Classification
painting
Medium
oil on linen
Dimensions
64 in. × 51 1/2 in. (162.56 cm × 130.81 cm)
Credit
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Photo credit
Courtesy David Zwirner, New York
Copyright
© Georg Baselitz
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/FC.617
Artwork status
On view on floor 6 as part of German Art After 1960

Audio Stories

How does Baselitz address his nation’s dark history?

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NARRATOR: 

Curator Gary Garrels. 

 

GARY GARRELS: 

Georg Baselitz began working in Berlin in the early 1960s. Its hard to recall or remember at this point, how ravaged Germany had been by the Second World War. And the country—psychologically, spiritually, culturally—had been devastated. And this is context out of which Baselitz is creating his early work. He created this series of paintings of these large human forms in really desolated landscapes.  

 

The figures are distended, mottled, bruised. He called them heroes, because they were trying to, again, to assert a strength [inaudible voice or background noise] of German character, but coming out of this very bruised, devastated society.  

 

Theyre very uneasy psychological kinds of situations in these pictures. Very brooding, a lot of darkness. And the relationship between the landscape and the figure is one where the figure feels very weighted, difficult. Theres no escaping.  

 

Youre really caught in the sort of existential kind of situation one cant escape history.  

 

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