Georg Baselitz

Exhibition label: As a young teenager Baselitz assisted a wildlife photographer who gave him a book with images of birds. "It became a kind of 'motif book,'" Baselitz said. In the 1970s he devoted several series to eagles. Beyond the childhood memories, the subject is metaphorically charged, as the eagle has long been a German national emblem. Despite Baselitz's reluctance to give symbolic interpretations to his work, the image of the falling eagle may carry historical and political connotations.