MUNICH.- The donation is the expression of a decades-long bond between the internationally recognized German artist, one of his earliest collectors and long-time supporter, and the museum staff.

Thanks to the donation, the Bavarian State Painting Collections now has an ensemble of 31 key works by the artist. Established in 1972, the collection of Baselitz works in the museum holdings exemplifies the artist’s development from the early 1960s to the present day. This emphasis on Baselitz is anchored in the collection in the context of extensive holdings of Joseph Beuys, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Anselm Kiefer, Sigmar Polke, Arnulf Rainer, and Andy Warhol, which are regularly presented in the exhibition spaces.

THE ORIGINS OF THE GEORG BASELITZ COLLECTION IN THE BAVARIAN STATE PAINTING COLLECTIONS
The origins of today’s Baselitz collection, which is now crowned by the donation, date back around half a century and begin in 1972 with the museum’s acquisition of the painting ‘Seeschwalbe’ (Tern, 1971/72). Four years later, a retrospective of Georg Baselitz—at this point not even forty years old—sponsored by the Galerie-Verein took place on the premises. Although such an event may seem self-evident today, this first solo exhibition of a contemporary artist in the Bavarian State Painting Collections was a milestone at that time. Prince Franz of Bavaria must be mentioned as a significant catalyst of this event, as well as a great proponent of a contemporary-oriented purchasing policy in the museum. The museum has pursued the continuous development of the collection over generations of directors and curators, and has persistently encouraged the commitment of many. These joint initiatives meshed like wheels to establish today’s wealth of works. 1984 marked a quantum leap for the collection, when Prince Franz of Bavaria donated a total of nine paintings by Georg Baselitz to the Pinakotheken, primarily via the Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds. Invaluable contributions were also made by PIN. Freunde der Pinakothek der Moderne, the Theo Wormland Foundation, the Michael & Eleonore Stoffel Foundation, as well as Georg Baselitz himself. Since 2009, the Baselitz works from the Udo and Anette Brandhorst Collection have also formed part of the Kunstareal.

THE DONATED WORKS
The works comprising this donation offer an insight into Georg Baselitz’s preoccupation with the subject of late work. ‘Piet in kurzer Hose (Remix)’ (Piet in Shorts (Remix), 2008) is the temporal and stylistic link to the existing collection. It is a remix of the scandalous image ‘Die große Nacht im Eimer’ (The Big Night Down the Drain, 1962/63) and thus also of some of Baselitz’s core themes, including the confrontation with collective and individual memory. In the picture Baselitz intertwines ideologically charged motifs such as the swastika or the skull with a Hitler hairstyle with his free rendering of Piet Mondrian’s iconic abstraction as well as own pictorial subjects. Past and present, the creative and the destructive, the private and the public combine to form a web that challenges the viewer in ever new ways. Baselitz’s ingenious treatment of a visual cosmos that was passed on by previous generations of artists also informs ‘Willem taucht auf’ (Willem Appears, 2013) and ‘Willem geht ab’ (Willem Leaves, 2014), in which he paraphrases—in the style of painting and the titles—the work of one of his influences, the artist Willem de Kooning, while idiosyncratically breaking away from him at the same time.

While the human form is situated in time and space by image details in these and many of Baselitz’s earlier paintings, such references are increasingly receding in his paintings since 2013. The aging artist develops a future (self-)portrait, each showing a naked, increasingly dematerializing body in a timeless and boundless space. Without recourse to traditional symbols, such as the skull, he focuses on the disappearance of the human body with merciless candor. The revealing of that which is unalterable, beyond social and religious anchor points, is the basis of the revolutionary power of these later images and sculptures.

50 YEARS OF COLLECTION HISTORY IN ONE VOLUME
To mark the occasion of the donation, the Bavarian State Painting Collections have compiled a publication on the complete holdings of paintings and sculptures by Georg Baselitz in the Bavarian State Painting Collections and the Museum Brandhorst. The publication is edited by Bernhard Maaz, who also contributed the foreword as Director-General of the Bavarian State Painting Collections, and Corinna Thierolf, Head of Postwar Art since 2002, who wrote an introduction to the context of the collection. The author of the central essay is Carla Schulz-Hoffmann, a renowned connoisseur of Baselitz’s work. From 1975 to 2011, she was instrumental in shaping this area of the collection, initially as a curator and then as Deputy Director-General.