Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming Willi Baumeister Catalogue Raisonné being prepared by Mrs Felicitas Baumeister, Stuttgart.
In the period immediately after the war Baumeister's work began to display an increasing emergence from the gloom of the Nazi regime that had, for example, been characterised by his archaic African and Sumerian compositions of those years. Turning towards a more optimistic and essentially spiritual exploration of the unconscious realm of picture making, he began experimenting with forms that became increasingly abstract and seemingly less and less to do with the human figure or the natural landscape. Without doubt, the most important works of the period 1945-50 are the series known as the Metaphysische Landschaften in which Baumeister, influenced by Far-Eastern calligraphic artists, by Zen Buddhist philosophy and perhaps also by the late work of Kandinsky, began to explore shapes and colours drawn almost exclusively from his own subconscious during a period of meditation.
Urweltformen schwebend II (Primal Shapes Floating) is a work related to the Metaphysische Landschaften series in that many of its forms have grown out of the experiments of that series. However, because of the date of the picture, it is often more closely associated with the group known as the Moby Dick series of 1950-51 in which Baumeister attempted to render the mood of Melville's epic novel through such shapes and signs he had discovered in the Metaphysische Landschaften. When asked which form represented the whale and which the whaler, Baumeister replied that he himself had no idea, but that the viewer should see the picture as he pleased. In Urweltformen schwebend II the mood is essentially far more playful and joyous than that of the Moby Dick pictures whilst being just as indicative of Will Grohmann's famous pronoucement that "Baumeister thought in pictures and in his pictures he painted the dreams of mankind."
This was the first painting by Baumeister acquired by the father of the present owners. He wrote in his diary on 21 January 1951: "Yesterday evening went to fetch three Baumeisters, each priced at DM400. ... Baumeister had sent: 1) Sonnennetze, 1950, which seemed to me to be too simple; 2) Mit Springendem Bogen, which is close to Roter Komet, and 3) Urform Rot auf Grün [original title of Urweltformen schwebend II]. On a light, unpleasant green lost shapes seem to float. I wavered for a long time between the latter two. In the end I decided to buy the great oil painting Urform Rot auf Grün. It seems to me that there is not a lot of distance between Surrealism, Miró and Baumeister."
In the period immediately after the war Baumeister's work began to display an increasing emergence from the gloom of the Nazi regime that had, for example, been characterised by his archaic African and Sumerian compositions of those years. Turning towards a more optimistic and essentially spiritual exploration of the unconscious realm of picture making, he began experimenting with forms that became increasingly abstract and seemingly less and less to do with the human figure or the natural landscape. Without doubt, the most important works of the period 1945-50 are the series known as the Metaphysische Landschaften in which Baumeister, influenced by Far-Eastern calligraphic artists, by Zen Buddhist philosophy and perhaps also by the late work of Kandinsky, began to explore shapes and colours drawn almost exclusively from his own subconscious during a period of meditation.
Urweltformen schwebend II (Primal Shapes Floating) is a work related to the Metaphysische Landschaften series in that many of its forms have grown out of the experiments of that series. However, because of the date of the picture, it is often more closely associated with the group known as the Moby Dick series of 1950-51 in which Baumeister attempted to render the mood of Melville's epic novel through such shapes and signs he had discovered in the Metaphysische Landschaften. When asked which form represented the whale and which the whaler, Baumeister replied that he himself had no idea, but that the viewer should see the picture as he pleased. In Urweltformen schwebend II the mood is essentially far more playful and joyous than that of the Moby Dick pictures whilst being just as indicative of Will Grohmann's famous pronoucement that "Baumeister thought in pictures and in his pictures he painted the dreams of mankind."
This was the first painting by Baumeister acquired by the father of the present owners. He wrote in his diary on 21 January 1951: "Yesterday evening went to fetch three Baumeisters, each priced at DM400. ... Baumeister had sent: 1) Sonnennetze, 1950, which seemed to me to be too simple; 2) Mit Springendem Bogen, which is close to Roter Komet, and 3) Urform Rot auf Grün [original title of Urweltformen schwebend II]. On a light, unpleasant green lost shapes seem to float. I wavered for a long time between the latter two. In the end I decided to buy the great oil painting Urform Rot auf Grün. It seems to me that there is not a lot of distance between Surrealism, Miró and Baumeister."