Portrait of Elke I

Georg Baselitz

1969 · Synthetic resin emulsion paints (Dispersionsfarbe) on canvas · Modern and Contemporary Art

Baselitz met his future wife, Elke Kretzschmar, in 1958 when they were both art students, yet more than a decade passed before she first appeared in his work. Based on a photograph turned upside down, this painting demonstrates Baselitz’s interest in inversion—a strategy that enabled him to neutralize personal content and eliminate individual expression in order to focus on the possibilities of painting itself. Yet the artist conceded that with Elke the matter was complicated: "I don’t illustrate Elke. If anything, I try to remove her, but I usually can’t. She comes into the process whether I want it or not, through the back of my mind." The resulting work is foundational in multiple ways. Not only did Baselitz revisit this particular composition with its frontal gaze and restrained stance in later works, but he would make Elke his most enduring subject, painting her numerous times throughout his career.

Artist

Georg Baselitz

Date

1969

Medium

Synthetic resin emulsion paints (Dispersionsfarbe) on canvas

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Gift of the Baselitz Family, 2020