"The original artist leaves what he knows and can do. He pushes on to the zero point. Here his higher state begins ... Genius can do nothing and everything. The artist cannot know in advance what he will hit upon; he cannot foresee what the final result will be. He may have a vision, but it pales as the work proceeds. He keeps on working with his medium and accepts the surprise that happens under his hand. He attains an artistic peak where he can leave experience behind, for 'the creative powers act directly from the centre'". So wrote Baumeister in The Unknown in Art in 1947. His works of the 1950s reveal an artist moving progressively towards his own philosophical and artistic ideal and finally finding it in the Montaru and Monturi paintings of 1953 to 1955.

In these later pictures Baumeister replaces the decorative abstract shapes of his earlier oils with many more significant symbols. Shapes are drawn from pre-historic art, African rock painting, ancient Sumerian legend, Aztec and Maya art and Far Eastern painting: in Baumeister's words, they are suffused with the forgotten and displaced 'remnants of man's memory'. Baumeister's objective is to produce entirely non-objective paintings which still have within them enough graspable references to draw the viewer into a metaphysical universe entirely outside the bounds of his own experience.