A painter re-makes himself

By Olivia Weinberg

Georg Baselitz is not for everyone. His early work stinks of brutality and decay; his self-portrait "The Big Night Down the Drain", 1962, is worse. Showing a short, fleshy masturbating figure, with an evil vacant stare, it was soon confiscated by the East German authorities. But don't let that put you off.

Born Hans-Georg Kern in 1938, in Deutschbaselitz, Saxony, he changed his name in 1961 to honour or humour his tiny home town. He studied at the East Berlin Academy of Art but was soon expelled. He didn't just break the rules, he made his own. Full of jarring colours, weird groupings and sombre motifs, his work is neither beautiful nor charming, but it has humour and real quality.