Willi Baumeister Overview

During his apprenticeship as a decorative painter Willi Baumeiste already visited evening classes at the Stuttgart Art academy. From 1909 to 1912 he attended Adolf Hoelzel´s composition class where he first met the later "Bauhaus" painter Oskar Schlemmer who was to become a life-long friend. In 1919-1920 he produced his first"Mauerbilder", panels with a wall-like relief structure created by adding sand and putty to the paint and cubist forms. These works brought about Baumeister´s inernational breakthrough. In 1928 the Frankfurt "Staedelschule" appointed him to run the applied arts, typography and fabric printing class. Baumeister joined the "Cercle Carre" in 1930. 1931 he became a member of "Abstaction Creation". During the goverment of the NS he was banned as a degenerate artist . During the war Baumeister wrote the book "Das unbekannte in der Kunst" The Unknown in Art which was first published in 1947. During these years as an degenarate artist he spent his time studying prehistoric and Oriental art, which was to provide him with motifs for his "Eidos" pictures and "Ideogrammes". He resumed teaching after the war when he accepted a post at the Art academy in Stuttgart. With his extensive oeuvre and his art-theoretic publications Willi Baumeister is considered one of the most important modern German artist. His varied oeuvre ranges from figurative works at the beginning to increasingly abstarct forms. He died in Stuttgart 1955.