At the age of 88, German painter and sculptor Georg Baselitz has died

Berlin – At the age of 88, the German painter and sculptor Georg Baselitz has died. The artist's studio informed the news magazine Der Spiegel of this today, with German media calling him one of the most significant figures. The APA agency wrote that Baselitz also held Austrian citizenship and that his signature style included paintings exhibited upside down. Baselitz's work was showcased by the Prague Gallery Rudolfinum in the second half of 2009.

According to the newspaper Die Welt, Baselitz is among the most important contemporary artists. He is known for his expressive paintings created with a rough brushstroke and figurative works.

Der Spiegel writes that Baselitz also broke through internationally, and in 2004 he was awarded the Praemium Imperiale, which is considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the arts. Baselitz, a leading figure of neo-expressionism, was among the most famous German visual artists alongside Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer.

The APA agency also reported that Baselitz was one of the great masters of modernity. Over the decades, he transformed from a provocative young artist into an established doyen of the profession.

Baselitz's style, despite all experiments, remains faithful to the representational depiction of reality. This does not change the fact that since 1969, the painter has been displaying the subject – the figure, the object – upside down. The method of inverted representation was the most consistent step in his work.

Georg Baselitz was born in 1938 as Hans-Georg Kern. He adopted his artistic surname from the name of his native Lusatian village, Deutschbaselitz. He made a name for himself in West Berlin, and the suffering during World War II became one of the main themes of his work.