Melancholie, drei Rosen, 1999

Georg Baselitz’ edition Melancholie, drei Rosen (Melancholy, Three Roses) continues his exploration of inversion as a method of visual and emotional disruption. The female figure, rendered in sparse, expressive lines, hangs upside down at the center of the composition, her posture conveying a sense of weightlessness and introspective stillness. Surrounding her are three bold red roses – arresting in their form, yet flattened and abstracted – imbuing the image with a sense of symbolic gravity. The inversion, a hallmark of Baselitz’s practice since the late 1960s, denies traditional readability and instead emphasizes form, gesture, and mood. Melancholie, drei Rosen is a poignant meditation on the human figure and emotional states, where the tension between beauty and disorientation creates a powerful, lingering unease.
Edition Schellmann published this work on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of art magazine.