Orangenesser (Orange Eater)

Created in 1980 and held in the same private collection since 1984, Orangenesser (Orange Eater) is a preparatory study for Baselitz’s series of monumental figures by the same name, whose untamed bodies emanate a raw, electric urgency. The 1980s marked a period of great artistic change for Baselitz, during which the chromatic vibrancy of German Expressionism began to resonate for the artist. His embrace of vivid and decadent colour found its way into the Orangenesser series – here in thickly applied maroon paint – but like all Baselitz’s output since the late 1960s, these works were sketched upside down, an act which toppled centuries of figural tradition and has since become the artist’s iconic motif. In the present work, the unexpected orientation of Baselitz’s orange-eating subject reveals a figure that, as art historian Andreas Franzke described, is ‘shaken from within by the consequences of [his] own compulsive actions’ (A. Franzke, Georg Baselitz, Munich, 1988, p. 140).