Willi Baumeister
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Willi Baumeister (January 22, 1889 – August 31, 1955) was a German
painter, scenic designer, art professor, and typographer.
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). Even during
his apprenticeship, Baumeister had already commenced his 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, with whom he studied until 1912, where he met his life-long
friend, Oskar Schlemmer. 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. 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. Even during the war, Baumeister met the painter
Oskar Kokoschka and the architect Adolf Loos 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 to the Stuttgart Academy,
which was rejected by the Academy. Klee, in his part, however, 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 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,
Dresden, and Hagen. His popularity and recognition abroad became
evident in a joint exhibition with Fernand Léger in the Berlin
gallery Der Sturm in 1922. During these years, Baumeister developed
professional relationships with artists such as Paul Klee, Léger, Le
Corbusier, Amédée Ozenfant, 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. 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 in Dessau. A member of the ring neue
werbegestalter (Circle of New Commercial Designers) (chairman: Kurt
Schwitters) 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" in Paris.
On the 31st of March 1933, following the National Socialist rise
to power, Baumeister was dismissed from his professorship at the
Städel. 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, and Oskar Schlemmer, and the art historian Hans Hildebrandt.
That year five of his works were shown in the National Socialist
exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) 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, and many others whoworked 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 of 1950, at the exhibition Das Menschenbild in
unserer Zeit (The Human Image of Our Time), Baumeister defended
modern art against Hans Sedlmayr'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.
