Ein neuer Typ (Held mit Fahne) [A new Type (Hero with Flag)] is an exceptional example of Georg Baselitz's Heroes series, his most influential and institutionally acclaimed body of work. In the summer of 1965, Baselitz began his Heroes, and within the span of one year, he produced one of the most pivotal series within his own oeuvre and, more broadly, twentieth-century German art. The eruption of creativity and artistic exploration during this period spurred an incisive analysis of human existence in the years following the Second World War. Heroes is comprised of 60 paintings, 130 drawings and 38 prints, an exceptional drawing, the hero and flag in the present work notably bear striking similarities and the same posture as Die großen Freunde [The Great Friends] housed in the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Displaying the symbolically loaded motif of the flag, which is extremely rare within the Heroes drawings and only included in six paintings. Ein neuer Typ (Held mit Fahne) [A new Type (Hero with Flag)] was included in the major travelling survey The Heroes, at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome and Museo Guggenheim in Bilbao.

In Ein neuer Typ (Held mit Fahne) [A new Type (Hero with Flag)]  the large Hero figure and its bold charcoal outlines stand in contrast to the earthy ochre of the watercolor and soft pared-back background. With his enlarged hands and bent arm, the hero stands tall while the monumental flag – a ubiquitous symbol of nationhood – is tilted downwards and lays at the ground. Baselitz's figure, including his robust, enlarged body and small head, is simultaneously powerful and exposed as he stumbles through the war-torn wreckage. The 'Hero' protagonist is thus archetypal of the vanquished and depleted survivors of devastated post-war Germany. The solitary wanderer in Ein neuer Typ (Held mit Fahne) [A new Type (Hero with Flag)] , with his tattered unadorned uniform, appears pensive as he looks ahead, his bare feet resting set against the mutilated ground. As pointed out by Eva Mongi-Vollmer in many Heroes works, "slack or discarded flags burden the protagonists instead of giving them support" (Eva Mongi-Vollmer, 'Heroes Without Deployment. The Years of Creation, 1965-66', in: Exh. Cat., Frankfurt, Städel Museum (and travelling), Georg Baselitz: The Heroes, June 2016 – November 2017, p. 23) and in Ein neuer Typ (Held mit Fahne) [A new Type (Hero with Flag)] this over sized symbol of a defeated nation reveals to heavy a load for the hero to bear.

Executed twenty years following the end of the war, Baselitz's Heroes recall another era, as if they endure trapped within their martial behavior and the brutalized land they stand upon. Baselitz's Heroes can also be seen as self-portraits; they appear in states of reflection, ambivalence and vulnerability. The figure, set in isolation and displaced, is archetypal both of the complex existentialism felt within Germany during the period and of the artist isolated within society. Exploring the German national identity in the wake of the Second World War, Baselitz was deeply affected by his childhood, where he was exposed to the violence of the Second World War, producing the Heroes series at only twenty-seven. Born in 1938 and aged seven at the end of the Second World War, Georg Baselitz once poignantly described the past that he inherited by saying, "I was born into a destroyed order" (Georg Baselitz in conversation with Donald Kuspit, 'Goth to Dance', 33, Summer 1995, in Gretenkort, p.245).

Defeated and devastated by the Second World War, the German nation was immersed in further anguish when it was carved up and divided into East and West. The West' Federal Republic and East' Democratic Republic' forged a fractured arena in which the diaMetricas lly opposed ideologies of Western Capitalism and Soviet Communism met head-to-head. The dissection of Berlin itself embodied the schizophrenia of a split country, and the Berlin Wall, erected in August 1961 and termed the 'Antifascist Protective Barrier' by the GDR after more than three million citizens had fled the East in mass exodus, became perhaps the most powerful totem of the epoch. It was in this segregated city, which had already become the topographical epicentre of a tectonic ideological struggle that Baselitz began to forge an artistic identity. Baselitz's Heroes depict protagonists whose work has been devastated, and they have lost all sense of order, appearing both heroic and fated they stand in isolation. Ein neuer Typ (Held mit Fahne) [A new Type (Hero with Flag)]  typifies the deliberate confrontation with existence and exploration of identity that distinguish Baselitz's artistic production from this period.

Having garnered the highest degree of commendation, many of the Heroes series are now housed in institutional collects ions worldwide. On March 7th 2022, a major retrospective showcasing six decades of Georg Baselitz's artwork closed at the Centre Pompidou, garnering increased international attention for an artist already considered one of the most influential of the 20th century.

Ein neuer Typ (Held mit Fahne) [A new Type (Hero with Flag)]  has remained in the esteemed private collects ion of Hardie Beloff for almost forty years. Over the course of those forty years, Hardie Beloff assembled a collects ion that spanned continents and cultures. Visceral and instinctive in his acquisitions, he bought only works that would enrich his home and his life. In doing so, he brought together exceptional examples by some of the most celebrated artists of the Post-War era. At the collects ion's core is the greatest grouping of works by Georg Baselitz in private hands, which together succinctly articulate the very best of the German artist's inimitable oeuvre. Deeply discrete during his lifet.mes , Hardie Beloff nevertheless believed in sharing his collects ion with the public and routinely lent works to institutional exhibitions under the alias "Fielding Mellish", a nod to the 1971 film Bananas. The appearance of the Beloff collects ion at auction constitutes the first t.mes that this remarkable group of works in its entirety has been seen publicly. Over 70% of the funds generated by the sale of the collects ion will be distributed to a wide array of charities dedicated to a variety of causes, including animal welfare, justice initiatives and a series of non-profits supporting the people and institutions of Hardie Beloff's community of many years, Philadelphia.

Artist

Georg Baselitz