Benjamin Katz: George Baselitz at work

Painter and sculptor Georg Baselitz is one of the most important German artists working today, and his art is held by major museums around the world. And for more than thirty years, photographer Benjamin Katz has been documenting Baselitz at work. Katz is famous for his photographic portraits of artists, including Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, Rosemarie Trockel, and Martin Kippenberger. His long experience working with artists—and the friendships he’s established with them—enables him to capture them when they are completely at ease. The resulting portraits offer an unprecedented view of artists actually working rather than posing. In this book, we see Baselitz with paintbrush in hand, contemplating a painting, lifting a hammer as he eyes an in-progress sculpture, or relaxing with a cigar and a dog at his side.


The photographs in this volume are intimate, personal, and disarming. A testament to decades of friendship, they reveal a new side of an artist we’ve previously seen only through his work.

Cornelia Gockel teaches art history at the art academy in Munich.