Willi Baumeister
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, scenic design
Scenic design
Scenic design is the creation of theatrical, as well as film or television scenery. Scenic designers have traditionally come from a variety of artistic backgrounds, but nowadays, generally speaking, they are trained professionals, often with M.F.A...
er, art professor, and typographer.
Life
Willi Baumeister, born in Stuttgart in 1889, completed an apprenticeship as a decorative painter in his native city from 1905 to 1907, followed by military service (fall 1907–1908). During his apprenticeship, Baumeister also began art studies at the Stuttgart Art Academy (Königlich Württembergische Akademie) (1905–1906), attended Robert Poetzelberger’s drawing class, and took additional lessons from Josef Kerschensteiner. In 1906 he resumed his apprenticeship and, in 1907, completed the trade test.Following his military service, Baumeister continued his studies at the art academy. Dismissed by his teacher Poetzelberger due to lack of talent, he switched into the composition class of Adolf Hölzel
Adolf Hölzel
Adolf Hölzel was a German artist/painter. His style developed from Impressionism to expressive modernism.- Biography :...
, with whom he studied until 1912, where he met his life-long friend, Oskar Schlemmer
Oskar Schlemmer
Oskar Schlemmer was a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer associated with the Bauhaus school. In 1923 he was hired as Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, after working some time at the workshop of sculpture...
. Baumeister took his first trip to Paris in 1911, successfully participated in a gallery exhibition in Zurich in 1912 and a year later participated in Der Erste Deutsche Herbstsalon (The First German Autumn Salon) in the Berlin gallery Der Sturm. There he met the expressionist painter Franz Marc
Franz Marc
Franz Marc was a German painter and printmaker, one of the key figures of the German Expressionist movement...
. In 1914 Baumeister had his first solo exhibition at Der Neue Kunstsalon (New Art Salon) in Stuttgart. In the same year, Adolf Hölzel arranged a commission for wall paintings at the Deutsche Werkbund-Ausstellung (German Werkbund Exhibition) in Cologne for Baumeister, Schlemmer, and Herman Stenner. Prior to being drafted into the army in the summer of 1914 (until 1918), Baumeister travelled to Amsterdam, London, and Paris. During the war, Baumeister met the painter Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.-Biography:...
and the architect Adolf Loos
Adolf Loos
Adolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Loos was a Moravian-born Austro-Hungarian architect. He was influential in European Modern architecture, and in his essay Ornament and Crime he repudiated the florid style of the Vienna Secession, the Austrian version of Art Nouveau...
in Vienna in 1915. In 1916 he participated in the exhibition Hölzel und sein Kreis (Hölzel and his Circle) at the Art Association in Freiburg im Breisgau, which was subsequently shown at the Ludwig Schames Art Salon in Frankfurt am Main. In 1918, still prior to being discharged from military service, he threw an exhibition with his friend Oskar Schlemmer at the Galerie Schaller in Stuttgart. Baumeister and Schlemmer campaigned to bring Paul Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...
to the Stuttgart Academy, which was rejected by the Academy. Klee, for his part, would have been willing to come. In 1919 Baumeister became a member of the Berlin artist association Novembergruppe (November Group). The group was founded by Max Pechstein
Max Pechstein
Hermann Max Pechstein was a German expressionist painter and printmaker, and a member of Die Brücke group.-Life and career:...
in 1918, immediately following Germany’s capitulation and the fall of the monarchy. It remained one the most important alliances of German artists until 1933.
In Stuttgart in 1919, Baumeister took up the initiative with Schlemmer and other artists to found the artist group Üecht (Alemannic: genuine, true), which he left in 1921. In 1919 he produced his first stage design, which was followed by seventeen others. In 1920 Baumeister completed his art studies, worked as an independent artist, and participated in exhibitions in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
, and Hagen
Hagen
Hagen is the 39th-largest city in Germany, located in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is located on the eastern edge of the Ruhr area, 15 km south of Dortmund, where the rivers Lenne, Volme and Ennepe meet the river Ruhr...
. His popularity and recognition abroad became evident in a joint exhibition with Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
in the Berlin gallery Der Sturm in 1922. During these years, Baumeister developed professional relationships with artists such as Paul Klee, Léger, Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
, Amédée Ozenfant
Amédée Ozenfant
Amédée Ozenfant was a French cubist painter.He was born into a bourgeois family in Saint-Quentin, Aisne and was educated at Dominican colleges in Saint-Sébastien...
, and Michel Seuphor. In 1924 several of his works were shown at the Erste Allgemeine Deutsche Kunstausstellung (First General German Art Exhibition) in Moscow and, in 1925, he participated in the Paris exhibition L’Art d’aujourd’hui (Art Today). Alongside his artistic work, he was also active in the area of commercial art and designed advertisements for numerous companies, such as Bosch and DLW (Deutsche Linoleumwerke)
In 1926 Willi Baumeister married the painter Margarete Oehm and was offered, in the same year, the opportunity to take part in the International Exhibition of Modern Art in New York, followed by a solo exhibition in Paris the following year, where he also participated in the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung (Great Berlin Art Exhibition) (with his own room), where he met Kasimir Malevich.
In 1927 Baumeister accepted a teaching post at the Frankfurt School of Applied Arts, later known the Städel
Städel
The Städel, officially the Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, is an art museum in Frankfurt am Main, with one of the most important collections in Germany....
. There he taught from 1928 a class in commercial art, typography, and textile printing. That very year, his daughter was born. The following year he turned down a position at the Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
in Dessau. A member of the ring neue werbegestalter (Circle of New Commercial Designers) (chairman: Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as...
) since 1927, Baumeister joined the artist association Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square) in 1930. In the same year, he received the Württemberg State Prize for the painting Line Figure. After "Cercle et Carré", he also became a member of the artist association "Abstraction-Création
Abstraction-Création
Abstraction-Création was a loose association of artists formed in Paris in 1931 to counteract the influence of the Surrealist group led by André Breton....
" in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
.
On the 31st of March 1933, following the National Socialist rise to power, Baumeister was dismissed from his professorship at the Städel
Städel
The Städel, officially the Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, is an art museum in Frankfurt am Main, with one of the most important collections in Germany....
. Thereafter he earned his living mainly from commercial art, he was still however able to travel to Switzerland, Italy, and France. In the same year, his daughter Felicitas was born. In 1936 he was introduced by the Wuppertaler architect Heinz Rasch, with whom he work during the 1924 Exhibition in Stuttgart, to Dr. Kurt Herberts, the owner of a varnish factory in Wuppertal. He began working for the company in 1937, joining other artists ostracized by the National Socialist regime: Franz Krause, Alfred Lörcher, Georg Muche
Georg Muche
Georg Muche was a German painter, printmaker, architect, author, and teacher.-Early life and education:Georg Muche was born on 8 May 1895 in Querfurt, in the south of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany and grew up in the Rhön area...
, and Oskar Schlemmer
Oskar Schlemmer
Oskar Schlemmer was a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer associated with the Bauhaus school. In 1923 he was hired as Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, after working some time at the workshop of sculpture...
, and the art historian Hans Hildebrandt. That year five of his works were shown in the National Socialist exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate art
Degenerate art
Degenerate art is the English translation of the German entartete Kunst, a term adopted by the Nazi regime in Germany to describe virtually all modern art. Such art was banned on the grounds that it was un-German or Jewish Bolshevist in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were...
) in Munich.
Until 1941, when a ban on his paintings and exhibitions was issued by the National Arts Chamber, Baumeister still had many opportunities to exhibit his works abroad in Europe. Despite the prohibition and the constant surveillance, he still worked at the Herberts varnish factory, as well as on his art. In 1943, when a bomb attack rendered Wuppertal as well as Baumeister’s house in Stuttgart uninhabitable, he moved with his family to Urach in the Swabian Alps.
In 1945, after the end of the Second World War, Willi Baumeister completed his book Das Unbekannte in der Kunst (The Unknown in Art), which was only published in 1947, even though he had completed the manuscript in 1943–44. In 1946 he received the position to teach a class in decorative paintings at the Stuttgart Academy of Arts and in 1947 resumed his exhibition activities. In 1949 he became the co-founder of the artist group Gegenstandlose (The Group of Nonrepresentational Artists), which threw its first exhibition called ZEN 49 in 1950. Here Baumeister met Fritz Winter, Ernst Wilhelm Nay
Ernst Wilhelm Nay
Ernst Wilhelm Nay was a German abstract painter influenced by L'Art Informel.Ernst Wilhelm Nay studied under Karl Hofer at the Berlin Art Academy from 1925 until 1928. His first sources of inspiration resulted from his preoccupation with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Henri Matisse as well as Caspar...
, Paul Fontaine
Paul Fontaine
-Life:Abstract-colorist painter Paul Emile Fontaine was born in 1913 in Worcester, Massachusetts to Elzear and Mary Fontaine, both of French Canadian descent. Fontaine had two brothers, Russell and Leo Fontaine, both younger. Paul Fontaine was early on encouraged to be a painter, deciding to pursue...
, and many others who worked in the field of fine arts after the end of the war and the dictatorship in Germany to forge a new beginning and connection to international developments. In his participation in the Erstes Darmstädter Gespräch (First Darmstadt Dialogue) in July 1950, at the exhibition Das Menschenbild in unserer Zeit (The Human Image of Our Time), Baumeister defended modern art against Hans Sedlmayr
Hans Sedlmayr
Hans Sedlmayr was an Austrian art historian. Sedlmayr was University Professor of Art History in Vienna from 1936 until 1945, then in Munich from 1951 until 1964, and finally at the University of Salzburg from 1965-69, where he established the art history curriculum...
's thesis of a “loss of the center” (“Verlust der Mitte”).
Henceforth until his death in 1955 Baumeister stood at the peak of his artistic career, which was demonstrated by his participation in many national and international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale in 1948, the São Paulo Biennale (Brazil) in 1951 (where he received a prize for his painting Cosmic Gesture), and Younger European Artists at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1953. In 1955 Willi Baumeister retired (emeritus) from the Stuttgart Art Academy, although he still received a teaching contract for the following semester. On the 31st of August 1955, he died sitting with his brush in his hand in his atelier in Stuttgart.
Work
Baumeister took part in his first exhibition in 1910, showing figurative works inspired by impressionism. His chief interest was even at this time already in cubism and Paul CézannePaul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
, whose work remained important to him throughout his life. These influences of impressionism and cubism that shaped Baumeister’s early paintings played an essential role in his work until the end of the 1920s. On the one hand, his representational painting was increasingly reduced (abstracting and geometric) as it gained form and lost depth. Parallel to the paintings of his friend Oskar Schlemmer
Oskar Schlemmer
Oskar Schlemmer was a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer associated with the Bauhaus school. In 1923 he was hired as Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, after working some time at the workshop of sculpture...
, Baumeister’s independent exploration of form and color emerged. Already around 1919, his teacher Adolf Hölzel
Adolf Hölzel
Adolf Hölzel was a German artist/painter. His style developed from Impressionism to expressive modernism.- Biography :...
wrote to him: “Out of all of us, you will be the one who will achieve the most.” Also worth noticing is that the idiosyncratic German path into modernism, expressionism, barely resonates at all in Baumeister’s work, even though he had met, for instance, Franz Marc
Franz Marc
Franz Marc was a German painter and printmaker, one of the key figures of the German Expressionist movement...
earlier on, and was certainly acquainted with the works of the Brücke (Bridge) artists and those of the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider).
After his return from the First World War, Baumeister rigorously developed his work further. Although one still finds figurative elements in his paintings, the forms grew increasingly geometric and took on a dynamic of their own, and Baumeister broke the traditional connection between form and color. Various work groups emerged at this time, including the relief-like wall pictures, and paintings with sports theme (as a symbol for modernity). In his painting, the grappling with shapes and material of the painting as well as the relationship between reality and representation became visible. Parallel to this development, nonrepresentational painting began to gain a foothold in works that centered on geometric shapes and their relationships to one another in the picture (e.g. Planar Relation of 1920). Baumeister’s lively exchange with other German and foreign artists must also be seen as vitally important in the consequent development of his work. Indeed, as it was for many of his fellow artists, posing such questions was part of the agenda of the modern age (for example, El Lissitzky
El Lissitzky
, better known as El Lissitzky , was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works...
, Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was a Russian painter and art theoretician, born of ethnic Polish parents. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist movement.-Early life:...
, Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...
, Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
, Amédée Ozenfant
Amédée Ozenfant
Amédée Ozenfant was a French cubist painter.He was born into a bourgeois family in Saint-Quentin, Aisne and was educated at Dominican colleges in Saint-Sébastien...
, Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
, Paul Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...
).
Towards the end of the 1920s, the shapes in Baumeister’s pictures grew softer. His paintings moved away from being oriented by the elementary shapes of the circle, triangle, and square towards organic forms. Although this development could also be observed concurrently in the work of other artists of his time, in Baumeister’s case, it was tied to his fascination for the prehistoric and archaic paintings. Baumeister intensely explored artifacts of early paintings and integrated this pictorial experience into his own painting. He identified the symbols, signs, and figures of cave painting as components of a valid archaic pictorial language that he used in his works. These included his increasing number of paintings in “oil on sand on canvas” that, in their materials, also approached the cave painting that Baumeister so admired (beg. ca. 1933). He himself collected examples of prehistoric findings, small sculptures, and tools, and occupied himself with cliff drawings that had been discovered in Rhodesia. This experience was undoubtedly important for Baumeister’s artistic disposition since he, evidently inspired by this rich store of prehistoric works, ultimately used extraordinarily reduced organic shapes for his “ideograms” (beg. ca. 1937). In these works he used a unique world of signs, which he saw as symbols for the laws of nature, their evolution, and human existence.
Baumeister’s artistic development was not interrupted when he lost his professorship at the Städel
Städel
The Städel, officially the Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, is an art museum in Frankfurt am Main, with one of the most important collections in Germany....
in Frankfurt in 1933. He continued to paint despite political persecution and economic difficulties. His work and its development are correspondingly diverse, even for the period after 1941, when he was imposed with an exhibition prohibition. While on the one hand his employment at the Dr. Kurt Herberts & Co. varnish factory in Wuppertal to research antique and modern painting techniques protected him politically, it also on the other hand gave him the opportunity to explore the fundamentals of painting, so that he could further his knowledge on the prehistoric cave painting techniques. At the same time, he tuned to Goethe’s theory of plant morphology. Out of this study the “eidos pictures” (eidos: idea) emerged: paintings that, unlike Baumeister’s ideograms, are rich in their variety and coloration. Moreover, the forms are organic, but seem to be less of symbols or signs, than images of simple plantlike and animal life forms. The pictures bear titles such as Rock Garden, Eidos, or Primordial Vegetable.
As an indefatigable researcher and collector, Baumeister also owned examples of African sculpture, in which he, as in the case of the prehistorical artifacts, saw universal images for life, development, and human existence. Correspondingly, their formal language entered Baumeister’s work in the early 1940s—highly abstracted, at first chromatically restrained (African Tale, 1942), and with time, became increasingly colorful and in part very complex in their formal design (Owambo 1944–1948). Both the titles and formal language reveal Baumeister’s preoccupation with other old (Latin American) cultures ('Peruvian Wall, 1946, and Aztec Couple, 1948).
Another example of his search for the “foundations of art” is Baumeister’s transposition of the Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh was the fifth king of Uruk, modern day Iraq , placing his reign ca. 2500 BC. According to the Sumerian king list he reigned for 126 years. In the Tummal Inscription, Gilgamesh, and his son Urlugal, rebuilt the sanctuary of the goddess Ninlil, in Tummal, a sacred quarter in her city of...
Epic, one of the oldest surviving literary works. Therefore, Baumeister used his personal pictorial and sign language in his illustration of the narrative (beg. 1943), which resulted in an astonishingly unified cycle, which with his pictorial language came strikingly close to depicting the literary and linguistic effects(impression) of the epic. He also produced illustrations to texts from the Bible—Saul, Esther, Salome—as well as to William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
’s The Tempest.
In this way, Baumeister single-mindedly and successfully developed a very personal and impressive visual language that was and still is unique in the German art immediately after 1945. The national and international recognition that Willi Baumeister received in the postwar period was correspondingly high. But his artistic development did not stop there. On the one hand, he developed his painting further in a virtuosic manner and, what is more, combined the variety of his formation phases in many other pictures—in part into “overalls structures” that nonetheless still possessed a fundamental that was reminiscent of landscape imageries (Blue Movement, 1950). On the other hand, Baumeister also produced densely packed abstractions that, proceeding from a central form, characterized him as an outstanding “nonrepresentationalist.” These paintings became quite possibly the most famous of his works, and were immediately associated by a broad public with Baumeister (e.g. ARU 2, 1955). Even so, Baumeister did not limit himself to this late “trademark.” Multiform and multicoloured pictures emerged as well in the year of his death.
Critical reception
Today, Willi Baumeister’s work still attracts a lot of attention, particularly in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. In contrast to the “French classics” of Modernism, or the important American artists of the second half of the twentieth century, Baumeister receives only a scant amount of attention in the Anglo-Saxon world. The quality of his work is undisputed.It is clear that while working in “domestic emigration” during the Nazi dictatorship, he had no influence on the vital artistic environment. After 1945 Willi Baumeister played an important role in the development of German and European art. Among the German painters who remained in the country despite the persecution by the National Socialists from 1933 to 1945, only a few succeeded in achieving such pioneering strides toward new contents and forms. Following World War II, he became a spokesman in the debate on Modernism. Regarded as an advocate of “abstract” painting, he was highly regarded by some, while strongly condemned by others.
An important collection of Willi Baumeister’s works is preserved in the Willi Baumeister Archive, which is part of the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
The Kunstmuseum Stuttgart is a contemporary and modern art museum in Stuttgart, Germany, built and opened in 2005.-Description:The cubic museum building with 5000 m² of display space was designed by Berlin architects Hascher and Jehle...
, and in the Sammlung Domnick (Domnick Collection) in Nürtingen.
Exhibitions (Selected)
- 1910 Württembergischer Kunstverein (as guest of an exhibition of French painters), Stuttgart, Germany
- 1927 Galerie d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France
- 1930 Venice Biennale, Italy
- 1931 Kunstverein Frankfurt am Main, Germany
- 1935 Galeria Milione, Milan, Italy
- 1939 Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Paris, France
- 1949 Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Paris, France
- 1950 Zen 49, Central Collecting Point, Munich, Germany
- 1951 Deutscher Künstlerbund, Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Berlin, Germany
- 1953 Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA
- 1954 Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany
- 1955 documenta 1, Kassel, Germany
- 1955 Cercle Volnay, Paris, France
- 1959 documenta II, Kassel, Germany
- 1964 documenta III, Kassel, Germany
- 1965 Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, Germany
- 1989 Nationalgalerie Berlin, Germany
- 1999 Willi Baumeister et la France, Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar, France
- 2000 Musée d’Art Moderne, Saint Etienne, France
- 2003 Museo Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain
- 2004 Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany
- 2004 Willi Baumeister – Karl Hofer: Begegnung der Bilder, Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Germany
- 2005 Bucerius Kunst ForumBucerius Kunst Forum-External links:* . Retrieved on 2009-10-08....
, Hamburg, Germany - 2005 Die Frankfurter Jahre 1928–1933, Museum Giersch, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
- 2005 Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, Germany
- 2006 Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal, Germany
- 2007 Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Germany
Literature by and about Willi Baumeister
- Westerdahl, Eduardo. Willi Baumeister. Tenerife: Ediciones Gaceta de Arte, 1934
- Baumeister, Willi. Das Unbekannte in der Kunst. Stuttgart, 1947; 2d ed. Cologne (Köln), 1960; 3d ed. Cologne, 1974; 4th ed. Cologne, 1988.
- Grohmann, Will. Willi Baumeister: Leben und Werk. Cologne [Köln], 1963. 1988 [1965, 1966??]
- Kermer, Wolfgang: Einige Aspekte der Kunstlehre Willi Baumeisters. In: 175 Jahre Friedrich-Eugens-Gymnasium Stuttgart. Stuttgart: Belser, 1971, p. 126-152
- Haftmann, Werner. "Gilgamesch - Einführung." In Willi Baumeister, Gilgamesch, 5-15. Cologne [Köln], 1976.
- Kermer, Wolfgang: Hommage à Baumeister: Klaus Bendixen, Karl Bohrmann, Peter Brüning, Bruno Diemer, Peter Grau, Klaus Jürgen-Fischer, Emil Kiess, Eduard Micus, Herbert Schneider, Peter Schubert, Friedrich Seitz, Ludwig Wilding. Exh. cat. Stuttgart: Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, 1979
- Ponert, Dietmar J. Willi Baumeister - Werkverzeichnis der Zeichnungen, Gouachen und Collagen. Dietmar J. Ponert in collaboration with Felicitas Karg-Baumeister. Cologne [Köln]: DuMont, 1988.
- Kermer, Wolfgang: Willi Baumeister - Typographie und Reklamegestaltung. Exh. cat. Stuttgart: Edition Cantz, 1989 ISBN 3-89322-145-X
- Baumeister, Schlemmer und die Üecht-Gruppe: Stuttgarter Avantgarde 1919. Exh. cat. Stuttgart: Hugo Matthaes, 1989.
- Willi Baumeister, Lithographien / Serigraphien: 55 Werke der Zeit 1919 bis 1964. Galerie Schlichtenmaier, cat. no. 109. Grafenau: Galerie Schlichtenmaier, 1991
- Bruns, Jörg Heiko Willi Baumeister. Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1991.
- Kermer, Wolfgang: Der schöpferische Winkel: Willi Baumeisters pädagogische Tätigkeit. Ostfildern-Ruit: Edition Cantz, 1992 (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart / ed. Wolfgang Kermer; 7) ISBN 3-89322-420-3
- Boehm, Gottfried. Willi Baumeister. Stuttgart: Hatje, 1995
- Kermer, Wolfgang (ed.): Aus Willi Baumeisters Tagebüchern: Erinnerungen an Otto Meyer-Amden, Adolf Hölzel, Paul Klee, Karl Konrad Düssel und Oskar Schlemmer. Mit ergänzenden Schriften und Briefen von Willi Baumeister. Ostfildern-Ruit: Edition Cantz, 1996 (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart / ed. Wolfgang Kermer; 8) ISBN 3-89322-421-1
- Beye, Peter, and Felicitas Baumeister. Willi Baumeister: Werkkatalog der Gemälde. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002.
- Kermer, Wolfgang: Willi Baumeister und die Werkbund-Ausstellung "Die Wohnung" Stuttgart 1927. Stuttgart: Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, 2003 (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart / ed. Wolfgang Kermer; 11) ISBN 3-031485-55-2
- Spielmann, Heinz, and Felicitas Baumeister. Willi Baumeister: Werkkatalog der Druckgraphik. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2005.
- Willi Baumeister: Figuren und Zeichen. Exh. cat. Hamburg, Münster, Wuppertal: Hatje Cantz, 2005.
- Schürle, Wolfgang, and Nicholas J. Conard, eds. Zwei Weltalter. Eiszeitkunst und die Bildwelt Willi Baumeisters. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2005.
- Kermer, Wolfgang (ed.): Über Baumeister: der Künstler und Lehrer im Urteil seiner Schüler. Stuttgart: Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, 2006 (WerkstattReihe / [Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart], ed. Wolfgang Kermer; 15) ISBN 3-931485-77-3
- Im Rampenlicht: Baumeister als Bühnenbildner. Exh. cat. Munich and Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-422-06775-2
- Chametzky, Peter. Objects as History in Twentieth-Century German Art: Beckmann to Beuys. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.ISBN 978-0-520-26042-9
Quotations about Willi Baumeister
- "In my eyes, the name Baumeister takes an extremely important place among those of modern German artists." (Fernand LégerFernand LégerJoseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
, 1949) - "He was the most European of German painters." (Will Grohmann, 1959)
- "Willi Baumeister's art belongs to the healthy, natural, appealing appearances." (Wassily KandinskyWassily KandinskyWassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...
, 1935) - "You are going to have a future, with certainty." (Le CorbusierLe CorbusierCharles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
to Baumeister, 1931)
Sources
- Grohmann, Will. Willi Baumeister: Leben und Werk. 1963. Cologne [Köln]: DuMont.
- Willi Baumeister: Figuren und Zeichen. Exh. cat. Hamburg, Münster, Wuppertal. Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz, 2005.
External links
- official Willi Baumeister Website of the Baumeister Archive and Family, Stuttgart (in English, GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, ItalianItalian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, and FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
) - includes numerous illustrations and photographs - Stuttgart Art museum (in GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
) - LEMO Biography (in GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
) - Baumeister and Stuttgart (in GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
) - Works at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco