Pantin
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac - Pantin
15 Sep → 25 Jan 2020
From Tuesday to Saturday 10 am to 7 pm. Closed on Sunday & Monday.
More than sixty years of marriage, a continuous love, a common experience and a shared old age. The exhibition "Time" at the Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery presents more than 30 portraits and as many drawings by Georg Baselitz, in which he pays tribute to Elke, his wife who accompanied the development of his work and inspired him throughout his career. The exhibition marks a new stage in the artist's reflection on the passage of time. The paintings dedicated to Elke take the form of an intimate meditation on old age, the meaning of love and the function of the portrait. The notions of beauty and the grotesque are mixed together in a refined pictorial vocabulary. In this way, Baselitz offers a new dimension to his work: a questioning of representation itself. His paintings are reminiscent of Otto Dix, Max Ernst, Lucas Cranach, and contribute to the tradition of Matisse and Picasso. Seen from afar, the figures seem to float in an indeterminate space; up close, the surface of the canvases reveals an infinity of details, diversifying the treatment of pictorial matter. By revisiting his own work and incorporating subtle references to art history, Baselitz offers a reflection on the meaning of painting itself.