In the mid-1960s, Baselitz painted a series of monumental figures, known as the Helden (Heroes), and began deconstructing pictorial conventions in the fragmented forms of his Frakturbildern (Fracture Paintings). He first began inverting his compositions in 1969, a novel format that has typified his work ever since. His directly tactile method of painting with his fingers in the 1970s encouraged a freer use of colour and material that would come to the fore in his expressionist colour fields of the 1980s.

The 1980s was a seminal decade for Baselitz, opening with his selection to represent Germany alongside Anselm Kiefer at the Venice Biennale, marking his first foray into sculpture. It was during this period that he established an international reputation, participating in a series of influential exhibitions across the globe, including A New Spirit in Painting (1981) at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, Zeitgeist (1982) at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, and Expressions: New Art from Germany (1983), which toured the United States. This was followed by his first American retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1995.

Baselitz’s work is represented in the collections of the most important public institutions worldwide, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Tate, UK, among many others. A retrospective of his sculptures was held at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (2011–12). His Heldenbilder (Hero Paintings) and Neue Typen (New Types) were shown at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt (2016), travelling to the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; and Guggenheim Bilbao. To mark the artist’s 80th birthday in 2018, comprehensive solo exhibitions were held at the Fondation Beyeler, Basel; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; and Musée Unterlinden, Colmar, France. In 2019, he was elected to the prestigious ​​Académie des beaux-arts in Paris as a foreign associate member and became the first living artist to have an exhibition at the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice.

New Drawings will coincide with the artist’s major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, on view from 20 October 2021 to 7 March 2022. In celebration of his admission into the Académie des beaux-arts, his monumental sculpture, Zero Dom (2021), will be installed in front of the Académie, on the Parvis de l'Institut de France, Paris, for the duration of the retrospective.