Sale: 433 / Post War I, June 11. 2016 in Munich Lot 904

 

904
Willi Baumeister
Homunkulus aufsteigend, 1953.
Oil
Estimate:
€ 300,000 / $ 324,000
Sold:
€ 362,500 / $ 391,500

(incl. surcharge)
Homunkulus aufsteigend. 1953.
Oil with syntheirc resin on hard fiber plate.
Beye/Baumeister 1924. Lower left signed and dated. Verso titled. 99.7 x 80.8 cm (39.2 x 31.8 in).
[EL].

With a written expertise issued by Felicitas Baumeister, Stuttgart, from 22 April 2016.

PROVENANCE: Collection Willy and Fänn Schniewind, Neviges.
Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia.

EXHIBITION: Willi Baumeister - Œuvre récentes, Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Paris, 13 April 1954 - 8 May 1954 (verso with remains of a gallery label).

The work "Homunkulus aufsteigend" is part of the work group "Faust und Phantom" which began in 1951 and lasted up until Willi Baumeister's death in 1955. In this work the artist used the composition of "Faust Schatten I" (1952, Beye/Baumeister 1923) and renders a variaton in portrait format. In doing so he leaves the observer a lot of freedom for associations, in order to discover the "unknown in art", as the title of his theoretic considerations on art from 1947 suggest. The light ground adds a merry character to the hovering figures. The black fantasy character, which Baumeister distilled from the amorphic dark forms from earlier works, ascends in the image's center



904
Willi Baumeister
Homunkulus aufsteigend, 1953.
Oil
Estimate:
€ 300,000 / $ 324,000
Sold:
€ 362,500 / $ 391,500

(incl. surcharge)