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Lot Essay
This is the first time that a major sculpture by Georg Baselitz has ever appeared at auction. Executed in 1990, Die Russin is one of the largest works from his famous series of cadmium yellow sculptures called The Women of Dresden, which the artist showed to great acclaim at Pace Gallery in New York in 1990. Baselitz has stated that, "Sculpture is more primitive and brutal than painting," and Die Russin was created from a single tree trunk by literally attacking it with a chainsaw, chisel and axe until a head emerged - mutilated but defiant. "In sculpture, using the saw is an aggressive process which is the equivalent of drawing. By working in wood, I want to avoid all manual dexterity, all artistic elegance, everything to do with construction. I don't want to construct anything" (cited in Georg Baselitz, exh.cat., Guggenheim Museum, 1995, p. 100).
In Baselitz's early sculptures of the 1980s, color was applied to define only certain areas of the figure, such as a nose or breasts. With the Women of Dresden, color dominates the forms as an expressive force. Baselitz is particularly interested in the physical properties of wood, and aligns himself with artists such as Paul Gauguin, Constantin Brancusi and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who similarly used a direct-carving technique to create instinctive and organic works inspired by primitive sculpture. "I am not interested in adopting the elevated cultural vantage-point of European sculpture and making use of all its sophisticated refinements. I set out to formulate things as if I were the first one, the only one, as if the precedents did not exist.' (ibid, p. 102)
In Baselitz's early sculptures of the 1980s, color was applied to define only certain areas of the figure, such as a nose or breasts. With the Women of Dresden, color dominates the forms as an expressive force. Baselitz is particularly interested in the physical properties of wood, and aligns himself with artists such as Paul Gauguin, Constantin Brancusi and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who similarly used a direct-carving technique to create instinctive and organic works inspired by primitive sculpture. "I am not interested in adopting the elevated cultural vantage-point of European sculpture and making use of all its sophisticated refinements. I set out to formulate things as if I were the first one, the only one, as if the precedents did not exist.' (ibid, p. 102)