With Baselitz. Avanti!, Museo Novecento in Florence presents a non-linear exploration of Georg Baselitz’s artistic practice, curated by Sergio Risaliti. Rather than a retrospective or a chronological survey, the project is conceived as a framework that emphasises the work’s present-day relevance, its capacity to renew itself over time without ever settling into a definitive form. The title itself sets the direction: ‘avanti’ not as linear progress, but as continuous movement, a tension that runs through the artist’s entire career. In this sense, the exhibition avoids the trap of a historicising interpretation, favouring instead a direct engagement with the processual dimension of Baselitz’s painting, which has always stood in tension with the conventions of figurative language.
“Baselitz. Avanti!”, 2026, installation view, ph Elisa Norcini courtesy Museo Novecento and the artist
A review of the exhibition – featuring over a hundred works – clearly reveals how it fosters a dialogue between pieces that highlight Baselitz’s ability to constantly revisit the fundamental questions of painting, re-engaging with them in a different way each time. The inversion of the image, now a canonical element of his practice, is not isolated here as a distinctive mark, but reinserted into a broader reflection on the construction and negation of the figure. The inverted image is not so much a code as a device that undermines the stability of the gaze, forcing it into a continuous renegotiation. In the works on display, inversion does not appear as a formal device, but rather as an act that destabilises the hierarchy between figure and ground, between recognition and perception. The subject remains, but is forced into a state of instability that undermines its immediate legibility.
“Baselitz. Avanti!”, 2026, installation view, ph Elisa Norcini courtesy Museo Novecento and the artist
Risaliti’s selection emphasises precisely this dimension of tension, this notion of painting as a site of resistance. The works do not present themselves as images to be deciphered, but as surfaces traversed by tensions: between gesture and control, between memory and erasure, between presence and dissolution. In this sense, Baselitz appears less as an established artist and more as one who continues to question his own tools.
“Baselitz. Avanti!”, 2026, installation view, ph Elisa Norcini courtesy Museo Novecento and the artist
The context of the Museo Novecento plays a role that is anything but secondary. Placing this reflection within an institution deeply rooted in the artistic history of 20th-century Italy creates a significant disconnect. Baselitz’s painting, with its expressive power and its problematic relationship with European tradition, enters into a zone of friction with the museum context, avoiding any form of peaceful assimilation. Rather than integrating, it seems to interfere, producing a more complex reading of both the work and the space that houses it. Far removed from a celebratory narrative, the project focuses on a celebrated artist still at the height of his career, whose painting appears today more exposed, at times more fragile, but precisely for this reason more radical. The mark becomes less assertive, more open to error, as if the work were tending to reveal itself in the process of becoming rather than in its completion.
“Baselitz. Avanti!”, 2026, installation view, ph Elisa Norcini courtesy Museo Novecento and the artist
In this context, Baselitz. Avanti! carefully avoids any form of monumentalisation. It does not construct a definitive image of the artist, but rather reactivates his contradictions, presenting a practice that continues to interrogate painting as both a language and an experience. The title is thus imbued with a productive ambiguity: it does not indicate a single direction, but a state of permanence in doubt, in tension, in the unresolved. It is an exhibition that asks the viewer to relinquish a reassuring interpretation, accepting instead to dwell in a state of perceptual uncertainty. Rather than confirming Baselitz’s role in the history of contemporary art, the exhibition seems to want to put it back into play, opening up a critical and aesthetic space for it.
Info:
Georg Baselitz. Avanti!
25/03 – 13/09/2026
A cura di Sergio Risaliti
Museo Novecento
Piazza Santa Maria Novella 10, Firenze
www.museonovecento.it
Art Curator and Art Advisor, graduated in Visual Arts and Cultural Mediation, with Master in Curatorial Practices, born in 1995, lives in Naples. He collaborates with Galleries and Independent Spaces, his research is mainly focused on Emerging Painting, with a careful and inclined gaze also on other forms of aesthetic language.
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