Georg Baselitz. AVANTI! is presented at the Museo Novecento in Florence from 25 March to 13 September 2026, in collaboration with the artist's studio. Curated by Sergio Risaliti in collaboration with Daniel Blau, it brings together approximately 170 paintings, prints and sculptures spanning more than sixty years.

The exhibition takes its title — AVANTI! — from the idea of moving forward through rupture. Baselitz's artistic language was shaped by the experience of growing up in Germany amid the destruction left by the Second World War. Rather than trying to restore a harmonious artistic tradition, he used destruction and historical trauma as material for reinventing figurative art.

His famous decision to paint figures upside down, developed from the late 1960s onwards, is central to this process. By reversing the image, Baselitz deliberately disrupts its narrative content: instead of immediately recognising a person, landscape or object, the viewer is forced to confront the painting itself — its colours, forms, surface and gesture.

What makes AVANTI! particularly valuable is its attention to printmaking. Woodcuts, linocuts, etchings and other works on paper run alongside paintings and sculptures, demonstrating that graphic techniques were not secondary exercises but an important part of Baselitz's thinking and experimentation.

The exhibition also explores recurring subjects and bodies of work including inverted figures, the Heroes series and the Remix works, where Baselitz revisits and transforms earlier images. The dialogue between prints, paintings and sculpture makes his constant process of repetition and reinvention particularly visible.