Georg Baselitz, a preeminent painter of postwar Germany and an engine of the 1980s Neo-Expressionist movement that rebuked Minimalism, and who would later come under fire for his comments about women artists, has died at 88. His death was first announced in a press release by Thaddaeus Ropac, one of the galleries that represented the artist.  Baselitz exploded into the German art consciousness in the 1960s with a formal grit matched by tormented subject matter: his breakout “Heroes” series (1965–66) features bloated, blocky figures balancing on ruined buildings and toppled flags. Through his eyes, postwar German society appeared raw and taut as an exposed muscle. Next came his “Fracture” series, which sees axemen and prey alike torn into strips and stitched back into mythic Germanic forests—“wounded landscapes,” as he described them.  Related Articles Baselitz pushed figuration beyond recognizable form into abstraction—ultimately, and famously, flipping the medium itself: his experiments culminated in his signature upside-down portraits and landscapes, both genres apt for his unique dissection of masculinity. This visual vocabulary emerged in The Man at the …