One Hundred Gifts

Georg Baselitz (*1938) has generously donated 100 of his works on paper to the Albertina in Vienna and the Morgan Library in New York, with both museums sharing equally in the new collection. The new special exhibition Georg Baselitz. 100 Drawings at the Albertina in Vienna, which opens June 7. The museum is showing a retrospective of Baselitz's work - drawings from early to recent years that demonstrate the enormous importance of the medium in his oeuvre. The drawings are not sketches, but autonomous images that nonetheless share a common motif with Baselitz's paintings. According to the Albertina, each drawing was an artistic challenge in its own right and was executed in pencil, ink, watercolor, and pastel.

The Albertina emphasizes that the artist's oeuvre turned art history upside down after 1945. His very own pictorial language developed from his special approach: He started with the figurative, but translated what he saw into an abstract form. He explored classical art history in order to defy it. With this reversal of motif, Baselitz freed himself from content and devoted himself exclusively to the fundamental question of pictorial design. The solo exhibition runs through September 17.