Georg Baselitz's 'Heroes' Exhibition at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome

A major exhibition of Georg Baselitz's 'Heroes' series opens at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome on March 3, 2017, running until June 18. Co-produced by Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, Städel Museum Frankfurt, Moderna Museet Stockholm, and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the show focuses on a specific phase of the artist's work. Baselitz, born in Kamenz, Germany in 1938, is among the most significant European artists to emerge between the 1970s and 1980s. In a 1995 interview, he expressed his tragic sensibility and resistance against illiberal regimes and codified violence, stating: 'I was placed in a destroyed order, a destroyed people, a destroyed society. And I did not want to introduce a new order. I had seen far too many so-called orders.' His perception of human and social collapse translates into intense painting cycles with monumental expressive force. The 'Heroes' gallery depicts figures in their human fragility—combatants, partisans, war victims in tattered uniforms against desolate landscapes—stripped of mythological aura, conveying guilt, fall, and a past of ruins. Curated by Max Hollein and Daniela Lancioni, the exhibition presents history as failure.