Polke. Richter. Baselitz. These are well-known names in the art world. In casual circles, especially in Europe, Markus Lüpertz would be included in that group. But here in the United States? Phillips Collection Director Dorothy Kosinski says not so much. A new exhibit she curated is trying to change that, in conjunction with a sister exhibit across town at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

In their first formal collaboration, the Phillips and the Hirshhorn are both displaying exhibits of the artist’s work. Together, Markus Lüpertz and Markus Lüpertz: Threads of History give the unfamiliar a crash course into Lüpertz’s career.

“Between the two, you really get a sense of just how heroically forceful and courageous his paintings are,” Kosinski says.

While the Phillips presents 50 years of work in about as many paintings, the Hirshhorn focuses on a shorter timespan during the artist’s formative years. Undoubtedly, Lüpertz was aiming to make a big impact on the art world. He did so in a literal sense, creating massive works like the 40-foot-tall Westwall [Siegfried Line] (1968), which is being shown in the U.S. for the first time.

A major highlight of the Hirshhorn exhibit, Westwall serves as a pivot point in Lüpertz’s career, Hirshhorn senior curator Evelyn C. Hankins says. Before, he could focus on art for art’s sake. But in creating this colossal tribute to a site so directly tied to war, Lüpertz entered a new stage.

“Westwall; when hung in conversation with his other paintings, points to an engagement with history and culture that you haven’t seen in his work up to that point,” Hankins says.

And that, she adds, feeds into a broader conversation about the social responsibilities of artists.

“I think the questions that he was asking in the 1960s and 1970s still have relevance today,” she says. “What do you paint? What does an artist paint? Is an artist responsible to art, to creativity, or is there a cultural and social responsibility there?”

The two exhibits mark the first in-depth U.S. survey of Lüpertz’s work, and give American audiences an apparently much-needed introduction to the German artist.

“He’s one of the most important painters active in Europe today and he is super well known all across the European continent with works in all the major museums and private collections,” Kosinski says, adding that American audiences are less familiar with Lüpertz than they are with some of his compatriots. That may be due, in part, to the fact that he doesn’t just create variations on a visual theme or exclusively paint, though both the Phillips and Hirshhorn exhibits stick to this medium of his work.

Other artists have a calling card. Campbell’s soup can? That’s gotta be Warhol. Does a subject’s face look like a brightly colored, asymmetrical stained glass window? Picasso. Lots of stick figures and symbols? It’s probably by Penck, one of Lüpertz’s contemporaries.

Lüpertz mixes it up, making it hard to pick the work out as his.

“One reason why his work may have been relatively more neglected here is that he refuses to adhere to a consistent style,” Kosinski says. “He moves from one thing to another. He casts aside normal categories of figurative painting, abstract painting. He blurs the line and kind of intentionally wants to fill us with a sort of irritation or consternation.”

American audiences just might not “get” Lüpertz.

“I also think that, for him, the mission of a painter is almost sacred. He takes it so seriously,” Kosinki says. “For 50-something years, he paints with such conviction and seriousness of purpose and beauty and painterly authority that I think is deeply rooted in a European, especially Germanic tradition of art history. Maybe the American public is less versed in that and might need some coaxing to understand where he’s coming from.”

If visitors come seeking a better understanding of Lüpertz, they’ll get it here. Hankins says one of the most successful aspects of the collaboration is how well it introduces visitors to the artist. “Not only do you get two viewpoints, and different scales of work being shown, but you also get a different sense of Markus Lüpertz himself.”

Kosinski worked closely with Lüpertz to mount the Phillips retrospective, which spans the entirety of his career. She says the decision to exclude his sculpture and works on paper points to the artist’s interest in presenting himself as a “master painter.”

“This is his goal with his entire artistic practice is to present the most heroic, extraordinary, forceful paintings he possibly can achieve,” she says. “With the two exhibits, which are such different but complementary experiences, I think he achieves that.”

Markus Lüpertz is on display at the Phillips through September 3. Markus Lüpertz: Threads of History will close September 10.