Woodman (Waldarbeiter), 1969 (charcoal & synthetic resin on linen)

During the early 1960s, Georg Baselitz began producing representational images—characterized by thickly painted surfaces and often emotional and/or tragic themes—that drew inspiration from Germany’s artistic and cultural heritage. Between 1967 and 1969, Baselitz executed a series of Fracture Paintings, in which he segmented his subjects—animals, shepherds, and woodsmen—into horizontal bands or irregular fragments. Strung up sideways against a massive tree trunk, this woodsman heralded the artist’s trademark inverted figures, which first appeared soon after this painting’s completion. Conjuring a world gone mad, Woodman evokes the psychic and physical disorientation Germans experienced after their war-torn nation was partitioned in 1946. Indeed, Baselitz created this work after he left a divided Berlin to reside in a small German village.