Georg Baselitz: Naked Masters

With a focus on the evolution of the naked figure in European art, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (7 March–25 June) places works by the German artist in dialogue with more than 40 paintings, selected by Baselitz, from the museum’s Picture Gallery. Works by the likes of Cranach the Elder, Titian and Rubens are presented alongside more than 75 of Baselitz’s upside-down figurative paintings, revealing the artist’s significant debt to the Old Masters. Baselitz’s Displaced Persons (2020) is paired with two different classical depictions of loss: Giovanni Antonio Burrini’s Orpheus & Eurydice (1695–1705) and Bartolomeo Manfredi’s Cain’s Fratricide (c. 1615). The exhibition also looks at nudity as a form of empowerment through different representations of the female figure, including Baselitz’s expressive Female Nude (1972) and Titian’s Diana and Callisto (c. 1566). Find out more on the Kunsthistorisches’s website.

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Finger Painting – Female Nude (detail;1972), Georg Baselitz. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek. Photo: Jochen Littkemann, Berlin; © Georg Baselitz 2023

Displaced Persons (2020), Georg Baselitz. Courtesy Gagosian; photo: Jochen Littkeman, Berlin; © Georg Baselitz 2023

Orpheus & Eurydice (1695–1705), Giovanni Antonio Burrini. Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Picture Gallery; © KHM-Museumsverband