The Easel

12th May 2026

Georg Baselitz, the German painter who turned postwar art upside down, dies at 88

Maria Martinez | Reuters | 1st May 2026

Baselitz was a provocative but consequential artist. Resisting the pull of 1950’s abstraction, he focused on the human form, using a style reminiscent of pre-war German Expressionism. It amplified his controversial focus on the “destroyed landscape… people [and] society” of post-war Germany. He often used the disorienting technique of painting figures upside-down. Late in life he opined that women “don’t paint very well”. The idea of “looking toward the future” is nonsense, he said. “Simply going backwards is better”.

Cecily Brown: ‘Painting happens very quickly; often I don’t know if it’s working’

Jackie Wullschlager | Financial Times | 21st March 2026

After art school, Brown left London for New York where she hoped she would fit in. Two decades later she is back for her first major solo show. Her “landscapes-as-abstractions” are both commercially appealing and critically acclaimed. Gestural amalgams of “flesh and pastoral” don’t carry a message other than her appreciation of painting. For some critics her work can be “inert” but not this writer. Brown wants to show “convulsive beauty [and] has magnificently achieved it … a triumphant homecoming”.

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