Kunstmuseum stuttgart willi baumeister biography
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works of willi baumeister" (2016), "Comb, Pastel and Buttermilk. From 1909 to 1912 he attended Adolf Hölzel's composition class where he first met the later "Bauhaus" painter Oskar Schlemmer who was to become a life-long friend. With his extensive oeuvre and his art-theoretic publications Willi Baumeister is considered one of the most important modern German artists.
These works brought about Baumeister's international breakthrough. By this stage, the subject matter of his paintings was mainly a multitude of corresponding masses of color, which were dominated by a large black color field in “Montaru 7A”.
In 1919-20 he produced his first "Mauerbilder", panels with a wall-like relief structure - created by adding sand and putty to the paint - and cubist forms.
During the war Baumeister wrote the book "Das Unbekannte in der Kunst" (The Unknown in Art) which was first published in 1947. Willi Baumeister, Adolf Hölzel and Fritz Seitz" (2020).
- Baumeister Archive at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
Photo: Gerald Ulmann
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Willi Baumeister - Artist
Two of Baumeister paintings in the LBBW Collection, “Weißer Kammzug” and “Belebte Halde II”, are revealing examples of how the artist approached the vivid structuring of surfaces.
Since 2005 it has made significant curatorial contributions to several exhibitions on Baumeister's work at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart: "Im Rampenlicht: Baumeister als Bühnenbildner" (2007), "Willi Baumeister International"(2013), "on paper... Aside from the free-floating shapes, touches of color and pictorial signs, the white oil-based paint is given a succinct internal structure with either a metal comb, or by using synthetic resin and filler emphasizing the impression of carved lines.
The Baumeister Archive manages the entire written estate of the Stuttgart artist Willi Baumeister (1889–1955).
In 1928 the Frankfurt "Städelschule" appointed the artist to run the applied arts, typography and fabric printing class.
The archive contains autographs, photos, publications by and about Willi Baumeister, and audio and video recordings.
Willi Baumeister
Stuttgart 1889 - Stuttgart 1955
During his apprenticeship as a decorative painter Willi Baumeister already visited evening classes at the Stuttgart "Kunstakademie".
During these years as a "degenerate artist" he spent his time studying prehistoric and Oriental art, which was to provide him with the motifs for his "Eidos" pictures and "Ideogrammes".
He resumed teaching after the war when he accepted a post at the "Kunstakademie" in Stuttgart. The archive has been a permanent component of the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart since its opening in 2015 and contributes significantly to making the oeuvre of this major exponent of abstract painting in postwar Germany accessible.
Hadwig Goez
Baumeister Archive at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
+49 (0)711 / 216 196 26
archiv-baumeister [at] kunstmuseum-stuttgart [dot] de (archiv-baumeister[at]kunstmuseum-stuttgart[dot]de)
Preserved in the archive are the artist’s written correspondence with friends and gallerists, his diaries, autographs, and manuscripts, as well as photographs, newspaper articles from 1910 to the present, and an extensive collection of publications on and by Baumeister.
Baumeister managed to achieve substantial clarity in creating a colored shape as shaped matter, an approach which he had already followed in his “Ideogramme” and “Eidos” paintings.
Since 2005, the "Willi Baumeister Archive” has been housed at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. The archive supports numerous exhibitions in Germany and abroad with loans.
Willi Baumeister joined the "Cercle Carré" in 1930 and in 1931 he became a member of "Abstraction Création". His varied oeuvre ranges from figurative works at the beginning to increasingly abstract forms.
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Both of these works also reflect Baumeister’s aesthetic belief that abstract art should be understood as a metaphor parallel to nature.Like his earlier works, Willi Baumeister’s late groups of works entitled “Han-i”, “Montaru”, and “ARU” hover between motif and absence of motif with their image content.
During the "Third Reich" Baumeister was banned as a "degenerate" artist and rarely showed himself in public. The holdings also include sketches, drawings, commercial art, graphics, typographical works, stage designs, and paintings.
The research facility is open to scholars, curators, and students.