Georg Baselitz Lot n° 17

Georg Baselitz Untitled 1979 Graphite on paper 86 x 61 cm. Framed under glass. Monogrammed and dated 'GB. III. 79'. - With studio and slight signs of age. Provenance Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York; Lempertz, Cologne, 03.12.1993, lot 563; private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia Exhibitions Basel 1987 (Galerie Buchmann), Frankfurt/M. (Galerie Neuendorf), Georg Baselitz, Adler, Ausst.Kat.Nr.14, p.43 with ill. "The eagle motif runs through the work of Georg Baselitz like a basic chord. The eagle appears for the first time in the 'Pandemonial Drawings' of 1962, soaring with mighty wings above the small view of the village of Deutschbaselitz. Thereafter, at all stages of the work, which develops in breaks, new painterly and graphic possibilities are tested on the eagle motif. [...] After the free drawings and overpainted graphics in connection with the eagle folder of 1974 and a group of eagle drawings in oil paints on paper from 1975 from New York, the preoccupation with this motif reaches its most intensive concentration in the series of large-format sheets from the period from November 1978 to April 1979. [...] The eagle motif can be formed in all materials, but it changes in its effect, since this is primarily determined by the materiality of the drawing media. [...] While the eagle body appears in compact materiality in the gouaches, it is dematerialized in the line drawings with soft outlines or reduced to a transparent framework by heavy layers of strokes." (Günther Gercken, Der geopferte Adler, in: Georg Baselitz, Adler, Ausst.Kat., Galerie Buchmann, Basel und Galerie Neuendorf, Frankfurt/M., Stuttgart 1988, p.5, p.7)