Baselitz's Fracture Paintings

Before he began inverting his pictures Georg Baselitz had other methods for disrupting the view of his charged images.  The paintings above are from the Fracture series, dating from 1966 - 1969, or about fifty years ago.  Woodsmen, hounds and cows abound, their visages torn and roughly reassembled with bits of the surrounding landscape poking through.  Baselitz turned eighty years old last January.  He was of the generation of German artists who grew up in the wake of the Nazi destruction of progressive culture. Many of them tried to forge a link back to the previous generation who were exiled, silenced or killed.