culture
April 30, 2026
‘In every drop of paint he slurped, you see the Holocaust’: the genius and torments of Georg Baselitz
The German artist lived through Nazism and communism – and his horrific, shaming works, including a masturbating Hitler, forced his country to face its past. Yet in later life, he beautifully captured human frailty, portraying himself and his wife nude
TL;DR
- Georg Baselitz, born in 1938, had direct experience of Nazi Germany and East German communism.
- His art often featured provocative imagery that confronted historical shame and guilt, including depictions related to Nazism.
- Baselitz's 1961 painting "Die große Nacht im Eimer" (The Big Night Down the Drain) depicted a masturbating figure with Hitlerian features.
- He displayed a wooden carving of a saluting Adolf Hitler in the German Pavilion at the 1980 Venice Biennale.
- In his later work, Baselitz portrayed himself and his wife nude and vulnerable, focusing on human frailty.
- The author found Baselitz to be a figure of honest uncertainty and deeply connected to human truth.
- Baselitz is compared to painters like Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach for his focus on bodies and memories.
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