The work “Kegelspiel mit Schaukel” (Skittles with Swing) was created at a time when a heated debate between proponents of figurative and abstract painting was raging in Germany and Europe. Willi Baumeister, who only came to abstract painting by taking a detour, was already one of the vehement defenders of abstraction at that time, which is clearly reflected in the stylistic change in his late work. He also publicly advocated for accepting what he saw as a necessary change in the understanding of modern art during the postwar period. For example, Willi Baumeister played a formative role in the first “Darmstadt Discussion” in 1950. As a prominent representative of modern and abstract painting, he resolutely defended this position at the first forum on the topic of “The Image of Man in Our Time” against traditional views of art. This stance was the intellectual framework for works created in the early 1950s, which are among the most important in his oeuvre.


The work “Kegelspiel mit Schaukel was also created during a period that was crucial to Willi Baumeister’s artistic development in the early 1950s.
Will Grohmann, author of the artist's first catalogue raisonné of paintings, assumed in 1963, probably due to the double date on the back of the painting, that the first version was created in 1947 and revised by Willi Baumeister in 1953, as was the case with many comparable works from this group (cf. Will Grohmann, CR 1963, p. 111). In the catalogue raisonné published by Peter Beye and Felicitas Baumeister in 2002, however, we find the following note regarding the double date: “Since (...) archive photos of the original state, which Baumeister almost always documented, are missing, it is more likely that the painting was not created before 1953 and that the date 1947 merely refers to the earlier treatment of the subject. This is also supported by the strikingly smooth painting surface, which is more typical of the artist’s late style (...)” (Peter Beye, Felicitas Baumeister, CR 2002, p. 570).

In terms of content, “Kegelspiel mit Schaukel” combines elements of the “Metaphysical Landscapes” with motifs from the “Kegelspiel” series. Above a narrow green horizon line, which can be associated with green soil, there is a kind of vaulted sky in brilliant white. It is interspersed with geometric elements in the primary colors red, green, blue, and yellow, broken up by shapes in white and black. Delicate black lines disrupt the geometric dominance and lend the composition a certain momentum and dynamism. A hinted cone figure at the bottom of the picture completes the overall rather ethereal ensemble, in which Willi Baumeister designs a kind of cosmic structure in which different forces collide. Willi Baumeister once said: “Abstract forms can contain, preserve, or absorb real forces (...) Non-representational expressions of the human spirit are open to the transcendent. Representational depictions always have a certain earthbound heaviness, and their wings are not free.” The fact that he was able to liberate himself from this earthbound heaviness with his abstract painting in the postwar period is still impressively demonstrated today by “Kegelspiel mit Schaukel” and its buoyant lightness. [AR]