Georg Baselitz

“Ugliness is a powerful statement.”

“My paintings are not a protest, but a statement of my existence.”

“I was born into a destroyed order, a destroyed landscape, a destroyed people, a destroyed society. And I didn't want to reestablish an order: I had seen enough of so-called order.”

“An object painted upside down is suitable for painting because it is unsuitable as an object.”

“A picture that is beautiful, or that is beautiful to me, is a picture that is new.”

“I begin with an idea, but as I work, the picture takes over. Then there is the struggle between the idea I preconceived... and the picture that fights for its own life.”

“Painting is not a means to an end. It is its own end.”

“The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its own ends through him.”

“Art is visceral and vulgar - it's an eruption.”

“The reality is the picture, it is not the object.”

“I do not work from photos. I work from memory and from my imagination. I’ve always been like this.”

“I am a German artist and what I do is rooted in the German tradition.”

“Tradition is a beauty, but it is also a cage.”

“I’m an aggressive, difficult, and unpleasant artist.”