“Kniende Gruppe” (Kneeling Group) features the most important elements of this particular creative period in an artful way. The figures in the foreground, reminiscent of Greek vases, are worked out in soft, yet monumental forms, while the background shows the fascinating coexistence of the organic material sand with hints of seating furniture and amorphous phenomena in the primary colors red, blue and yellow. Despite these different pictorial elements, Baumeister transformed them into a balanced composition through a clear geometric arrangement and a composed flatness. Even though the painting appears to be easy to decipher due to its supposedly clear structure at a first glance, it presents more of a puzzle than a solution at second glance. The image’s elements are in a free play that also allows the viewer to enter into a relationship with the content. Baumeister opens up an alternative cosmos here, which, considered it was created in 1933, opens up a completely new level of meaning. While he was much celebrated and appointed to a professorship at the renowned Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main in 1928, he was dishonorably dismissed five years later after the National Socialists had seized power. His art was defamed, shown at the “Degenerate Art” exhibition in Munich in 1937 and he was banned from painting and exhibiting. But he wasn’t deterred by that and continued his artistic production hidden in inner exile. Quality and innovativeness of his works remained high, as many exhibitions abroad in the difficult 1930s show: in 1934 he took part in the Zurich exhibition "Neue Deutsche Malerei” (New German Painting), followed by solo exhibitions in Rome and Milan in 1935, as well as in Basel and Paris in 1937. “Kniende Gruppe” was also honored in a London exhibition in 1938. He was one of the few German artists who were able to immediately regain artistic foothold in their home country after the end of the National Socialist reign of terror. He was appointed to the new State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart as early as in 1946. Until he died while painting in 1955, he had earned a prime rank in art history. [AW]