The Whitechapel Art Gallery in London held a major retrospective of Georg Baselitz’s work in 1983, curated by Nicholas Serota. The exhibition traced Baselitz’s career from the Pandämonium manifestos through the Helden series to the then-recent inverted paintings. It was one of the first comprehensive museum surveys of a German Neo-Expressionist in Britain and established Baselitz’s presence in the English-speaking art world outside the German gallery system.
The retrospective coincided with the broader institutional ratification of Neo-Expressionism following “A New Spirit in Painting” (1981) and Documenta 7 (1982). Serota, who had co-curated the Royal Academy show, brought the same institutional authority to Baselitz’s individual oeuvre. The catalogue — with essays by the curator and critics — remains a key document for understanding how the international museum system received German figurative painting.
The Whitechapel had a history of presenting controversial post-war German art; the Baselitz show extended that tradition and prepared the ground for later Kiefer retrospectives at the same venue.
See also
- Georg Baselitz — the artist
- a-new-spirit-in-painting — the 1981 London canonization
- documenta-7 — institutional ratification
- zeitgeist — the German companion exhibition