Georg Baselitz: Meine Schule

Gagosian is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent work by Georg Baselitz at the 555 West 24th Street gallery in New York. Conceived and designed by the artist and curated by Richard Calvocoressi, _Meine Schule_ is Gagosian's first presentation of Baselitz's work since his death in April, and includes his last completed paintings; his last sculpture, _Strawinsky_ (_Stravinsky_, 2026); and a second late sculpture, _1965_ (2024). The November show marks more than twenty-five years of collaboration between the gallery and the artist. Larry Gagosian, in his foreword to the exhibition's catalogue, notes that the works on view cap a remarkable sixty-year career and represent "a creative goldmine." Two paintings from the series _Meine Schule_ carry echoes of Baselitz's earliest memory, from the 1940s, of the schoolhouse in Deutschbaselitz, Germany, where his father was a teacher and where the family lived during the war. _Meine Schule, die Jungs_ (_My School, the Boys_) and _Meine Schule, die Mädchen_ (_My School, the Girls_) (both 2026)—neither of which has been previously exhibited—depict schoolchildren standing before a banner emblazoned with the Nazi slogan _Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer_ (One People, One Empire, One Leader) that was hung on the outside of the school building on occasions such as Adolf Hitler's birthday. This final allusion to Baselitz's roots, which echoes the idea of an artistic 'school,' brings his creative life full circle. In the other paintings on view, the artist renders simple, inverted images of himself and his wife, Elke, in fine, ink-like black lines on lush golden grounds, adding, in the artist's words, "a misplaced Willem de Kooning" to each composition in the form of a cluster of colorful impasto brushstrokes. "These pictures are not literary, not stories, they are not political, not doctrinaire, not ideological, they are not idiotic statements or whatever," Baselitz declared with characteristic brio. "What they are is a provisional line drawn between past and present, with something added!" The paintings are also closely related to those exhibited in _Eroi d'Oro_ at Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice (May 6–September 27, 2026), which Baselitz characterized as a summation of his artistic activity.