Georg Baselitz opens 'Eroi d'oro' May 5

Painting is the story here — and the timing changes everything. Georg Baselitz’s “Eroi d’oro” opens in Venice on Tuesday, May 5, at Fondazione Giorgio Cini, just days after the German artist’s death at 88. That means this is no longer just another Biennale-season collateral show. It now reads as a last look at how Baselitz was still pushing his own painting into stranger, harder territory at the end. (cini.it) ### What is “Eroi d’oro”? It’s a focused exhibition of Baselitz’s most recent large-scale paintings, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero and organized by Fondazione Giorgio Cini with Thaddaeus Ropac. The title means “Heroes of Gold,” and the works center on figures placed against gold backgrounds that flatten space instead of opening it up. The show runs through September 27, so it will sit(cini.it)a one-week event. (cini.it) ### Why does the gold matter? Because Baselitz is not using gold as decoration. The gold ground basically cancels ordinary depth — no cozy background, no believable room, no easy illusion that bodies are standing inside a stable world. Fondazione Giorgio Cini describes the surfaces as flat and icon-like, and that is the useful clue: these paintings borrow the visual authority of religio(cini.it)votional. (cini.it) ### What do the paintings show? Mostly bodies — nude figures, self-portraits, and portraits of his wife Elke. But they are not polished classical bodies. Baselitz has long liked awkwardness, fracture, and instability, and these new works keep that pressure on. The contrast is the point: fragile flesh drawn or painted with rough insistence, set against a background material that usually signals permanence, wealth, or sanctity. (domusweb.it) ### Why is this such a Baselitz move? Because Baselitz spent decades attacking the normal rules of painting from inside painting itself. He is most famous for turning figures upside down, but that trick was never just a trick. It was a way to stop viewers from reading the image too quickly and force attention back onto (domusweb.it)flattening. That’s an inference, but it fits the logic of the work on view. (domusweb.it) ### Why open this during Biennale week? Because Venice in May is not just one exhibition — it’s an ecosystem. The 61st Biennale opens to the public on May 9, with previews from May 6 to 8, so a major Baselitz show at San Giorgio Maggiore lands right as curators, collectors, artists, and critics flood the city. In practi(domusweb.it)conversation with the season’s broader art-world agenda. (labiennale.org) ### Does his death change how people will see it? Yes — probably a lot. A late-career exhibition can feel like a progress report. After an artist dies, the exact same rooms start to feel like a summing-up. That does not mean the show was designed as a memorial. It wasn’t. But turns out viewers will now read every decision — the gold, the bodies, the severity, the scale — through the fac(labiennale.org)world. (cini.it) ### So what should a viewer watch for? Watch the tension between grandeur and vulnerability. The gold wants to monumentalize everything. The bodies resist that. They look exposed, temporary, sometimes almost scribbled into place. That push-pull is where the show lives — not in reverence, but in friction. (cini.it) ### Bottom line “Eroi (cini.it)l refusing ease. Venice gets a Biennale-season exhibition, but also something sharper — a final chapter that looks less like closure than an argument with painting that never really stopped. (cini.it)