Willi Baumeister Lot n° 541

Ideogram on green (openwork circle). Oil on cardboard, laminated on hardboard. 1947. ca. 53 x 45 cm (hardboard ca. 54,5 x 47 cm). Signed lower right. Verso on the hardboard hardly legible titled and dated. The present work is part of the important group of works "Cézanne on the way to the motif and plans of forms", which was created between 1947 and 1951. Paul Cézanne had a great influence on Willi Baumeister, "he loved Cézanne above all else. For him Cézanne was the turning point of the new painting, he studied him again and again, and even in later years related much of what he invented on his own to him. To a certain extent Cézanne was also for him the teacher of the Cubists, who meant more to him than the 'Blaue Reiter' and whom he never ceased to admire" (Will Grohmann, Willi Baumeister. Leben und Werk, Cologne 1963, p. 9). After his work ban and the branding of his art as "degenerate," Willi Baumeister was once again able to participate in an exhibition in Überlingen in the fall of 1945 under the title "Deutsche Kunst unserer Zeit. Already on November 15 of the same year he had his first solo exhibition after 1933 in Stuttgart. In addition to this activity he was appointed professor and head of a class for decorative painting at the new State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart in 1946, where he noted in his diary: "In 14 days it will be 13 years since I was brusquely dismissed. I was of the opinion that I would never come to the surface again. Now everything seems favorable, especially the successful pictures made during the dark years. What will the office bring?" The depicted work with the (non)representational forms on a green ground anticipates in spirit the founding of the "Group of the Non-Representational" - later known as "ZEN 49". After the war Baumeister sought a new language and a new morality, which he wanted to demonstrate with his work. He wanted to make his abstract painting accessible and understandable to a broader public. Grohmann 1145; Beye/Baumeister 1552. We thank Hadwig Goez, Archiv Baumeister, Stuttgart, for her kind advice in cataloguing this work. Exhibition: Deutsche gegenstandslose Malerei und Plastik der Gegenwart, Kunstverein Freiburg i. Br., 1950, Ausst.-Kat. Provenance: Galerie Haller, Zurich; Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer, Munich 1.12.1980, lot 133, with b/w plate; private collection, Bavaria. Taxation: Differentially taxed (VAT: Margin Scheme).