The exhibition traces six decades of the German Neo-Expressionist master’s career, from early figurative works to his final years

Early-bird ticket sales have opened for a major retrospective of Georg Baselitz, the German Neo-Expressionist artist whose radical approach to figuration reshaped postwar European painting.

Organized by Sehwa Museum of Art, operated by the Sehwa Arts and Culture Foundation of Taekwang Group, the exhibition will run from August 13 to December 27 at the museum in Jongno-gu, Seoul. According to the museum, the show will present works that have not previously been shown in Korea, offering Korean audiences a rare opportunity to survey Baselitz’s six-decade career.

The exhibition carries particular significance as the first museum-scale retrospective of Baselitz to be held after the artist’s death in April 2026. Baselitz, born in Saxony in 1938, became one of the most influential figures in postwar German art, known for his confrontational imagery, rough handling of paint and persistent challenge to the conventions of representation.

From the 1960s onward, Baselitz rejected both socialist realism and the dominant languages of abstraction, turning instead to fractured, raw and often unsettling images of the human figure. His now-iconic inverted paintings, in which figures and objects are turned upside down, became one of the defining gestures of his practice.

For Baselitz, inversion was not a visual trick. By turning the image upside down, he disrupted the viewer’s habit of reading painting as narrative or representation. The figure remained visible, but its meaning became unstable. In this tension, Baselitz opened painting to questions of form, materiality, memory and historical trauma.

The upcoming Sehwa Museum of Art retrospective will examine the artist’s long and restless engagement with painting. It is expected to include early provocative figurative works, bold brushwork, inverted portraits and late works that reflect on aging, memory and mortality. Together, they trace the formal and psychological intensity that defined Baselitz’s career.

Ticket sales opened at 1 p.m. on July 13 with a limited “super early-bird” offer at 40 percent off the regular price. A first early-bird period runs from July 14 to 31 with a 30 percent discount, followed by a second early-bird period from August 1 to 12 with a 20 percent discount. The regular adult ticket price is 15,000 won.

Located in the Heungkuk Life Insurance Building in Gwanghwamun, Sehwa Museum of Art has positioned itself as an urban museum that introduces major currents in contemporary art to the public. With the Baselitz retrospective, the museum is set to bring one of the most forceful voices of postwar German art to Seoul.

Baselitz pushed the wounds of an era into the language of painting. He turned images upside down not to hide them, but to make viewers look again. This summer, his six-decade artistic journey will unfold in Seoul.

[Sayart = Maria Kim] SayArt.net
sayart2022@gmail.com