Woodman (Waldarbeiter) (1969) is a charcoal and synthetic-resin drawing on linen by Georg Baselitz, held at the Art Institute of Chicago. Though from 1969, it extends the logic of the earlier Helden series: a solitary laboring figure, monumental in scale, presented without redemption.
Close looking
The figure fills nearly the entire vertical field, his body rendered in aggressive, scraping charcoal strokes that leave the linen ground visible in passages. The scale is bodily: the viewer stands before a figure roughly their own height, but the posture is bent, subordinate, absorbed in labor. The composition is frontal and centered, yet the body twists slightly, breaking the symmetry with a shoulder that juts and a spine that curves under its own weight.
The figure-ground relation is unstable. The resin fixative has darkened the charcoal into something closer to paint; the ground and the figure merge in the lower half where the medium pooled. What reads first is the torso — a mass of black and gray marks that resolve, slowly, into a human back. The head is small, almost an afterthought; the hands are blunt tools. There is no palette in the chromatic sense, but there is tonal range: the resin creates a glossy, almost wet surface in places, while the dry charcoal remains matte and powdery. The texture is the subject as much as the figure is.
See also
- Georg Baselitz — the artist
- Helden series — the broader series this belongs to
- Modell für eine Skulptur — the later carved-wood reprise