Georg Baselitz’s Heroes of 1965 and 1966, the ragged giants of his breakthrough year, reached Ely House in the first British exhibition devoted to the series.
Thaddaeus Ropac London opened Georg Baselitz’s Hero paintings at Ely House in Mayfair on Tuesday 13 October 2026, the first British exhibition devoted to the series.
Baselitz was born Hans-Georg Kern in 1938 and grew up in East Germany. The Academy of Fine and Applied Arts in East Berlin expelled him in 1957 for “sociopolitical immaturity”, and he graduated in West Berlin in 1963.
He began inverting his motifs in 1969 and represented Germany at the 1980 Venice Biennale alongside Anselm Kiefer. He died in April 2026, aged 88.
He painted the Heroes in 1965 and 1966, aged 27, after a residency at the Villa Romana in Florence. There, Mannerist prints and the distorted figures of Pontormo and Parmigianino had caught his eye.
Each canvas is built on one outsized figure in rags or a torn uniform, stranded on ravaged ground. “They’re not heroes swinging their fists,” he said. “They look broken, destroyed, ragged, tattered.”
The London show borrowed from Tate, the Berlinische Galerie, Museum Frieder Burda and Museum Küppersmühle Duisburg and from the artist’s family. Its catalogue carries Max Hollein’s essay for the Städel Museum’s 2016 survey, the first museum exhibition devoted to the series.