Baselitz - Lot 128

Baselitz What you are not is a self-portrait 48 pages, paperback, dust jacket Numbered 187 from an edition of 285 + current edition (second edition in 2021) "L'art en écrit", 2002. Editions Janninck Format: 125 x 210 mm Includes a signed and numbered etching printed by Niels Borch Jensen in Copenhagen. Note: Georg Baselitz (born Hans-Georg Kern in 1938 in Deutschbaselitz, Saxony) is a painter, draughtsman, sculptor and printmaker. He has been a major figure on the European and international contemporary art scenes since the 1970s. In the field of printmaking, of which he is a great collector, he is interested in various engraving processes (xylography, linocut, drypoint, etc.). Today, he is a professor at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Still, there's a Baselitz mystery. Why, since 1969, has this renowned artist painted his pictures upside down? Is it to force the viewer to "do the somersault and the double somersault"? In his text Ce que tu n'es pas is a self-portrait, in a bold, poetic style, the artist addresses various elements of his own history and conception of painting. His artists of reference include Munch, Picabia, Michaux and Fautrier, all of whom he questions both in terms of their creation and their nationality. Are Italians really Italian, and is Baselitz really German, does he paint in Germany? Baselitz has the courage to confront himself, to go out and meet himself; he seeks to grasp himself, to know himself. But the path to get there is arduous, full of pitfalls and can sometimes make you dizzy. When you're looking for yourself, you run the risk of not finding yourself, or of finding yourself everywhere. Everything rocks. Hence the question of self-portraiture. Ce que tu n'es pas est un autoportrait is a powerful text that doesn't answer everything, but only some of what's essential. The limited edition is accompanied by a signed and numbered etching, printed by Niels Borch Jensen in Copenhagen.