The Crucified I

Berlinische Galerie, Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, Fotografie und Architektur, Berlin, DE

1994

VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

The figure on the cross appears helpless and disfigured, yet provocative and defiant. In the early 1960s Eugen Schönebeck goaded the art world and the general public with gruesome depictions of damaged bodies. These tortured and crucified figures evoke Germany’s dark past. In the eyes of the younger generation, there had been no appropriate engagement with National Socialism and the Second World War. Through their art, Schönebeck and his friend Georg Baselitz (b. 1938) were among those who rebelled against the silence of their elders. As a protest they elevated the ugly, obscene and grotesque to central themes in their new type of figurative painting.