Georg Baselitz's Final Exhibition: A Chaotic Reckoning with Death

The Final Artistic Statement

Georg Baselitz's final exhibition presents a powerful, emotional reckoning with death by the influential German artist who died in April at age 88. The works, created while Baselitz was frail and facing mortality, showcase his signature inverted figures and chaotic style as he confronts his own mortality.

A Visual Journey Through Mortality

On one wall, a body falls calmly through a serene blue sky. On the opposite, splat, it's landed with a thud on the blood-spattered mud. You don't need to be an expert in image analysis to figure out what Georg Baselitz's final paintings are about: death was coming for him, and he knew it. Baselitz painted these final works from a wheeled office chair with a paintbrush on a stick, the canvas splayed out on the floor in front of him, his body not strong enough to stand like it used to. But they are still immediately recognisable as Baselitz works, filled with scrawled nude bodies, hung upside down to disorientate the viewer and subvert your gaze.

The Physical Manifestation of Aging

It's just that now the chair has left mucky tracks across the paintings, evidence of the slow creep of decrepitude. The figures in these works, as usual, are mainly him and Elke, his wife and great muse. It's their sagging skin and brittle limbs scrawled on every work. As soon as you walk in and see that body falling through the sky you know exactly what Baselitz was dealing with: life is a trip, a rush, and then bang, you hit the dirt and you're dead.

Desperate Struggles Against the Inevitable

Instead of still and calm, the figures are flailing and thrashing, they've grown extra limbs, they are fighting against what's coming, they are panicked, manic. They look like spiders trying to climb out of a bathtub, and he repeats them over and over. The final gallery is filled with these enormous golden insectile forms wriggling on black canvases, falling into the abyss, trying desperately to escape. They're pretty horrifying things, bleak, angry, filled with fear.

Canonization Through Art

Things are calmer in the room of golden canvases. Here, his and Elke's bodies are papery thin, fragile things. You can barely distinguish one from the other, they've almost become one figure now. For years, we've been watching Baselitz's figures become frailer and weaker – he wasn't a prolific painter, and he had his fair share of exhibitions, so we got to see him age over time, his lines become shakier, his figures become saggier and more gaunt. But this is another level, a sense of finality, of impending morbidity, of bodies broken beyond repair. With the gold canvases, it's like he's canonising himself and his wife, turning the figures into Byzantine religious icons.

The Artist's Legacy

Baselitz said, "Now that I'm more or less at the end of my painting activity, I thought I should draw some kind of conclusion." The eagles, the bodies, the references to art history: this is him reaching for all of the touchstones of his life in art. He knew, I guess, that artists outlive themselves through their work, and these are objects to be worshipped long after he's gone. How could you not be moved by a painter this important, trying to say goodbye and doing it so beautifully? He wanted a conclusion, well here it is, a full stop on a career. Or an exclamation point. What a painfully sad goodbye.

Exhibition Details

Georg Baselitz: Back Again is at White Cube Bermondsey, London from 10 June to 30 August 2026.