Sale: 361 / Post War/ Contemporary Art, Dec. 12. 2009 in Munich Lot 312.10

 
Willi Baumeister - Flucht der Kontinente


312.10
Willi Baumeister
Flucht der Kontinente, 1949.
Oil
Estimate:
€ 40,000 / $ 43,200
Sold:
€ 48,800 / $ 52,704

(incl. surcharge)

Oil with synthetic resin over pastose surfacer on hard fibre board
Beye/Baumeister 1579. Signed and dated lower right. Signed, dated, titled and inscribed on verso of the hard fibre board. 64,8 x 81 cm (25,5 x 31,8 in)

PROVENANCE: Private collection Sourth Germany (directly acquired from the artist in 1951).

EXHIBITION: Gegenstandslose Malerei in Deutschland, Städtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim 1952, cat. no. 7.
Willi Baumeister, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, 23 January - 21 February 1954, cat. no. 77.
Kunst unserer Zeit, Private collection Karl Ströher, Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt 1954, cat. no. 11 (with illu.).
Deutsche Malerei - Ausgewählte Meister seit Caspar David Friedrich, Wolfsburg 1956, cat. no. 1, illu. 70.
Willi Baumeister. Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne/Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe 1965, cat. p. 18, no. 41 (with illu.).
Willi Baumeister, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 30 May - 4 July 1965, cat. no. 43.

LITERATURE: Will Grohmann, Willi Baumeister, Stuttgart 1952, p. 59, no. 135 (with illu.).
Will Grohmann, Willi Baumeister - Leben und Werk, Cologne 1963, pp. 114f., catalog raisonné no. 1173 (with illu.).
Erika Pohl-Ströher/Ursula Ströher/Gerhard Pohl (publisher), Karl Ströher - Sammler und Sammlung, Stuttgart 1982, p. 257 no. 37 (with illu.).

During his apprenticeship as a decorative painter Willi Baumeister already visited evening classes at the Stuttgart Kunstakademie. 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. 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. These works brought about Baumeister's international breakthrough. In 1928 the Frankfurt Städelschule appointed the artist to run the applied arts, typography and fabric printing class. Baumeister joined the 'Cercle Carré' in 1930 and in 1931 he became a member of 'Abstraction Création'. During the 'Third Reich' Baumeister was banned as a 'degenerate' artist and rarely showed himself in public. During the war Baumeister wrote the book 'Das Unbekannte in der Kunst' (The Unknown in Art) which was first published in 1947. 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.
“In the last years of his life Baumeister began to work on a number of cycles that apparently did not depict figurative contents. Black, which occupied an important role in his earlier works, is expanding to a point when it large parts of the surface, as it is the case with the “Safer“-, “Faust“-, “Montaru - Paintings“. The titles do not help at all to understand the paintings, they are merely words that conjure associations of forms and colors.“ Heinz Spielmann in: Willi Baumeister. Bilder und Zeichnungen. Kunstverein Braunschweig 1977 p. 10.
With his extensive oeuvre and his art-theoretic publications Baumeister is considered one of the most important modern German artists. His varied oeuvre ranges from figurative works at the beginning to increasingly abstract forms. [KD].




312.10
Willi Baumeister
Flucht der Kontinente, 1949.
Oil
Estimate:
€ 40,000 / $ 43,200
Sold:
€ 48,800 / $ 52,704

(incl. surcharge)