This is one of a series of paintings that Baselitz painted in the first half of 1989, with the generic title of ‘Streubilder’ (or ‘Scatter Paintings’) or ‘Ciao America’. ‘Scatter Paintings’ describes the lack of a compositional focus in works like ‘Volkstanz - Marode’. Its ‘pattern’ of tiles and heads is reminiscent of the all-over quality of American Abstract Expressionism, but the primitivist style and reference to folkdance are unapologetically European. Baselitz was at the forefront of European Neo-Expressionist painting from the 1960s onwards, which enjoyed massive popularity in the 1980s, and caused some to see European art eclipsing American art at the time. Ciao America!