Georg Baselitz, the German painter whose raw, emotionally turbulent canvases defined late-20th-century expressionism, died at 88. His work arrived like a provocation. Distorted figures, inverted compositions, murky colors that suggested psychological upheaval rather than beauty. He built an entire career on the persona of the tortured male genius, a figure whose inner turmoil justified both artistic brilliance and, as it turned out, contempt for women artists.
That last part matters. Baselitz made inflammatory comments about female painters throughout his life, dismissing their work with a casual misogyny that galleries and institutions largely overlooked while canonizing his own. The art world excused the bigotry as part of the package, the price of access to his particular brand of anguished authenticity. It's a familiar transaction in art history: brilliant man, terrible views, we'll celebrate one and forget the other.
His influence ran deep anyway. Baselitz shaped how an entire generation of painters thought about expression and distortion. He proved you could make work that looked broken and call it profound. Whether that legacy holds up, now that the myth around him has cracked, remains an open question the art world is only beginning to ask.