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‘30 years of Sculpture’ at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden focuses on Georg Baselitz’s sculptural work. In each of the nine sky-lighted exhibition halls, works from nine different periods are presented, starting with 1979’s ‘Modell für eine Skulptur’ - Baselitz’s first sculpture - and continuing through to his latest sculpture ‘Folk Thing Zero’ (2009). Sculptures with direct correlation to particular paintings are displayed in juxtaposition to them. Much as the painter Baselitz prefers a liberated way of painting with regard to content and brushwork, the sculptor Baselitz employs an elemental and unpolished technique for his carvings, utilizing chainsaw, axe and chisel. His sculptures, as his paintings, reject all forms of harmony and symmetry. The jagged lines express a rigorous wilfulness which is intentionally manifested in a rude display of force. Each figure is a product of this raw forcefulness and derives its unmistakeable appearance from it. Baselitz began sculpting in 1979, when he came to the conviction that sculpture could translate the power of representation in a more direct way than painting, and that its language was easier to decode.

His early sculptures, though invoking the human form, do not recall specific people but are carriers of artistic concepts. Being aggressively hewn from maple, lime, red beech or cedar tree trunks without any technical elegance, Baselitz’s sculptures often give the viewer the impression of looking at ‘wounded figures’.

A Catalogué Raisonné of Georg Baselitz’s sculptures and an original print by the artist is being published at the occasion of the exhibition.