Willi Baumeister international Willi Baumeister and European Modernity 1920s–1950s

Works by Willi Baumeister from the years 1909-1955 Supplemented by works of international artists of the time

Daimler Contemporary, Potsdamer Platz Berlin November 21, 2014 – March 29, 2015

Works from the Baumeister Collection by Josef Albers, Hans Arp, Julius Bissier, Georges Braques, Carlo Carrà, Marc Chagall, Albert Gleizes, Roberta González, Camille Graeser, Hans Hartung, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Franz Krause, Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger, El Lissitzky, August Macke, Otto Meyer-Amden, Joan Miró, László Moholy-Nagy, Amédée Ozenfant, Pablo Picasso, Oskar Schlemmer, Kurt Schwitters, Michel Seuphor, Gino Severini, Zao Wou-Ki

From the Daimler Art Collection: Hans Arp, Willi Baumeister, Max Bill, Camille Graeser, Otto Meyer-Amden, Oskar Schlemmer, Georges Vantongerloo

Stuttgart artist Willi Baumeister (1889–1955) is one of the most important German artists of the postwar period and among the most significant representatives of abstract painting. His influence as an avant-garde artist, as a professor at the School of Decorative Arts in Frankfurt am Main and after 1946 at the Stuttgart Academy, and as a major art theoretician could be felt far beyond Germany.

From early on, Baumeister was in close contact with French artists and exhibited his works in Italy, Spain, France, and Switzerland. He could seamlessly resume these contacts after the Second World War. The exhibition retraces his international relations to gallerists, collectors and art historians.

It will, for the first time, present parts of his private art collection, which he assembled through swapping his own works for paintings by his artist friends. The collection comprises, among others, paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, Hans Arp, Fernand Léger, and Kazimir Malevich.

The focus of the exhibition is on central groups of works by Willi Baumeister, ranging from his constructivist phase to the Mauerbilder and the late Montaru paintings as well as the Afrika series. They offer an overview of the development of Baumeister’s oeuvre and at the same time demonstrate his international reputation. The works will be supplemented by archival materials such as letters, newspaper articles, and unpublished photographs that impressively illustrate the high degree to which he was recognized both in Germany and abroad. Together they reveal the multifaceted image of an artist who engaged in an intense exchange with the international art scene before and after the Second World War.

The exhibition, conceived by the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, has been adapted for Berlin and supplemented by works from the Daimler Art Collection.