Georg Baselitz: More Sexist Remarks On Why Women Painters Don’t Succeed

Georg Baselitz, The outspoken German painter has again caused controversy over his views of women painters. In an interview,with the Guardian newspaper, he stated; to journalist Kate Connolly. “The market doesn’t lie,” Even though the painting classes in art academies are more than 90% made up by women, it’s a fact that very few of them succeed. It’s nothing to do with education, or chances, or male gallery owners. It’s to do with something else and it’s not my job to answer why it’s so.”

Baselitz’s work has been recognised as a powerful, inventive and controversial painter since he burst upon the art scene in the 1960s. His views have clearly remained in the 1950s. In the 1970s. He was part of a group of Neo-Expressionist German artists, occasionally identified as ‘Neue Wilden’, focusing on deformation, the power of subject and the vibrancy of the colors. He is well known for his upside-down images and seen as a revolutionary painter as he draws the viewer’s attention to his works by making them think, sparking their interest. From the outset, Baselitz confronted the visceral realities of history and the human and cultural tragedies of a world in turmoil with a cast of tragic anti-heroes. 

In 2013 he told the German newspaper, Der Spiegel that female artists are not recognised because they simply “don’t paint very well”.  He added, painting demands “brutality against the thing itself, against what already exists”. This is art as destruction,  anathema to the “natural” feminine tendency to nurture, love, and care for both children and husband, who will presumably be too busy making a masterpiece to help out with the housework.

This time the sexist artist declared that women cannot paint. And even if they can paint they are not good artists: Baselitz: “Oh God! Women simply don’t pass the test”. SPIEGEL: What test? Baselitz: “The market test, the value test”.

Georg Baselitz was born in 1938 in the former East Germany. He studied painting at the Hochschule für bildende und angewandte Kunst in East Berlin. Expelled for “sociopolitical immaturity. “He successfully applied to West Berlin’s Hochschule der Künste and continued his studies in the class of Professor Hann Trier.During this period he was heavely influenced by the theories of Ernst-Wilhelm Nay, Wassily Kandinsky and Kasimir Malevich.

Photo: Via Twitter

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