Georg Baselitz is seen here in 2010, standing in front of two of his works at the Albertinum, the modern art museum in Dresden. And yes, the paintings — which brought him worldwide fame in the 1970s — are meant to be upside down.

Baselitz launched his career with provocative paintings in the 1960s, at a time when the Berlin-Weissensee art school had already dismissed him for being immature. The 1962/63 painting Die grosse Nacht im Eimer (The Big Night Down the Drain), showing a masturbating male figure, is one of his most famous paintings from that period.

Born in 1938 as Hans-Georg Kern in the Saxon town of Deutschbaselitz, he began studying art in the mid 1950s, first in East and then in West Berlin, where he moved in 1958. As a tribute to his hometown, he began using the surname Baselitz in 1961. Above, a woman contemplates his 2016 painting Offenes Tor (Open Gate) at the White Cube contemporary art gallery in London.

Baselitz resisted the art world dogma that he encountered on both sides of the border. In the former East Germany, painting was meant to serve as a formal depiction, while in the West abstraction was prized above all else. The young painter did not feel at home with either ideology. In the end, he chose to use a different perspective to express himself, as seen here in Dinner in Dresden.

Baselitz produced more than 60 "Russian" paintings between 1998 and 2005, defamiliarizing motifs remembered from his childhood in East Germany — a belated rebellion against the dogma of Socialist realism with its strong tendency toward objectivity. He even painted the founder of the Soviet Union upside down, in the 1999 work Lenin on the Tribune, seen here.

In 2015, Baselitz presented eight self-portraits at the Corderie dell'Arsenale as part of the 56th Venice Biennale. A photo that, due to age, wasn't particularly enchanting, served as model for his paintings. It wasn't his first appearance at the Biennale: in 1980, Baselitz presented a wooden sculpture at the German pavilion that stirred controversy for its similarity to Adolf Hitler.

The Biennale inspired Baselitz to turn to sculpture. "The sculptures will come into being somehow, if you devote yourself to this work," he thought. He chose wood as material, saying: "Well, the wood doesn't have a choice if I hammer at it long enough." His Dresden Women (above) were shown by the Dresden state art collection to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 2009.

Protesting a planned change to a German law on protecting cultural goods, Baselitz announced in July 2015 that he would withdraw his loans from German museums. According to the revision, entire museum collections would have been put under protection, barred from export outside Germany. The plans were later relaxed. Here, the cycle CDF includes linocuts and xylographs.

Georg Baselitz is still one of the world's most significant contemporary artists. The current German art ranking Kunstkompass lists him in fourth place, a rank which has strongly influenced the price of his works. Last year, he sold his bronze sculpture Zero Dom (Zero Dome) for €950,000 ($1.2 million). Whether the sculpture has been turned on its head or not remains a topic of speculation.