Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming Willi Baumeister Catalogue Raisonné being prepared by Mrs Felicitas Baumeister, Stuttgart.
The playful, quirky shapes that populate the canvases of much of Baumeister's oeuvre, resemble in many ways the work of his Catalan contemporary Joan Miró. A certain surreal quality also lies behind Baumeister's choice of the names for his series. Montaru, a composite of the latin word mons (mountain) and the Biblical Mount Ararat, though a completely arbitrary and non-descriptive name, nonetheless conjures up connotations of the primeaval and primitive in his art.
The large black shape, seemingly floating in the void, almost fills out the picture plane, and with its irregular edge recalls the outline of an imaginary map. This sense of a massive geological formation, detached from its surroundings, is given further strength by what appear to be strings, or roots, flying in the wind. Balancing the large, seemingly mobile "continent" in the centre, is a small dark-purple "rock" jutting out at the lower edge of the painting.
This continent, relating as it does to the Schwarzer Fels (Black Rock) series, also relates in some metaphysical way to the human form. Are not the two "drops" within the brown central shape reminiscent of eyes? As Will Grohmann disagrees:
"Continents have no eyes and, although Baumeister has repeatedly insisted that in [the] ultimate analysis all his shapes are allied to those of the human body, it is hard to see any figurative elements in these works. What we are looking at is non-figurative no-man's-land where nothing points to any known reality, not even the grace notes." (Will Grohmann, Willi Baumeister: Life and Work, London 1985, p. 142).
But it would be misleading to interpret Baumeister's work as being abstract in a formalist sense: "So-called abstract painting", the artist stated, "is not abstract in the sense of remoteness from life and humanity. An artist's sensations are entirely natural." (Ibid. p. 11).
The Montaru series, which is characterised by dominant black shapes, like the Aru series, and the white pendant series Monturi, can be seen as a late response to the early Suprematist paintings by Malevich. Both the works of Baumeister and Malevich hung in adjoining rooms in the 1927 Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung, and it would seem highly probable that Baumeister had read Malevich's Die Gegenstandslose Welt ("The Non-Objective World"), which appeared as No. 11 of a series of Bauhaus books in the same year. It charts out similar aims and concerns as Baumeister's Das Unbekannte in der Kunst ("The Unknown in Art").
Baumeister painted fifty-three variants of the Montaru theme, dating from 1953 to 1955. Grohmann felt that horizontal pictures such as Montaru 3a were the most successful format: "By and large the oblong Montaru designs resemble the upright ones, except that their breadth gives them an epic quality. If we look at them not from bottom to top but from left to right, the coloured foils, the ornamental forms, and the flying satelites or meteors have room to develop. We can almost believe that they pass by like constellations, but there is no attempt at an impression of depth: after all, the constellations on the horizon look as if they were drawn on an astronomical chart." (Ibid. p. 142).
The playful, quirky shapes that populate the canvases of much of Baumeister's oeuvre, resemble in many ways the work of his Catalan contemporary Joan Miró. A certain surreal quality also lies behind Baumeister's choice of the names for his series. Montaru, a composite of the latin word mons (mountain) and the Biblical Mount Ararat, though a completely arbitrary and non-descriptive name, nonetheless conjures up connotations of the primeaval and primitive in his art.
The large black shape, seemingly floating in the void, almost fills out the picture plane, and with its irregular edge recalls the outline of an imaginary map. This sense of a massive geological formation, detached from its surroundings, is given further strength by what appear to be strings, or roots, flying in the wind. Balancing the large, seemingly mobile "continent" in the centre, is a small dark-purple "rock" jutting out at the lower edge of the painting.
This continent, relating as it does to the Schwarzer Fels (Black Rock) series, also relates in some metaphysical way to the human form. Are not the two "drops" within the brown central shape reminiscent of eyes? As Will Grohmann disagrees:
"Continents have no eyes and, although Baumeister has repeatedly insisted that in [the] ultimate analysis all his shapes are allied to those of the human body, it is hard to see any figurative elements in these works. What we are looking at is non-figurative no-man's-land where nothing points to any known reality, not even the grace notes." (Will Grohmann, Willi Baumeister: Life and Work, London 1985, p. 142).
But it would be misleading to interpret Baumeister's work as being abstract in a formalist sense: "So-called abstract painting", the artist stated, "is not abstract in the sense of remoteness from life and humanity. An artist's sensations are entirely natural." (Ibid. p. 11).
The Montaru series, which is characterised by dominant black shapes, like the Aru series, and the white pendant series Monturi, can be seen as a late response to the early Suprematist paintings by Malevich. Both the works of Baumeister and Malevich hung in adjoining rooms in the 1927 Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung, and it would seem highly probable that Baumeister had read Malevich's Die Gegenstandslose Welt ("The Non-Objective World"), which appeared as No. 11 of a series of Bauhaus books in the same year. It charts out similar aims and concerns as Baumeister's Das Unbekannte in der Kunst ("The Unknown in Art").
Baumeister painted fifty-three variants of the Montaru theme, dating from 1953 to 1955. Grohmann felt that horizontal pictures such as Montaru 3a were the most successful format: "By and large the oblong Montaru designs resemble the upright ones, except that their breadth gives them an epic quality. If we look at them not from bottom to top but from left to right, the coloured foils, the ornamental forms, and the flying satelites or meteors have room to develop. We can almost believe that they pass by like constellations, but there is no attempt at an impression of depth: after all, the constellations on the horizon look as if they were drawn on an astronomical chart." (Ibid. p. 142).