Baumeister, Willi

Description:

Stuttgart, 1889 - 1955
55 x 81 cm, R.
"Auszug der Giganten", 1947. Oil with synthetic resin on hardboard. Signed and dated "3 . 47" in the wet paint lower right, and signed, titled, dated and inscribed "Besitz W. B." on the reverse.
Beye/Baumeister, 1247.
Mario Calabria, München.
Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer Kunst, München, 87th auction, 26. - 28. November 1984, p. 25, no. 112 (with colour fig.).
Galerie Orangerie-Reinz, Köln.
Galerie Denise René Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf.
Collection Monika and Horst Bülow, Leonberg, acquired there in 1985.
Literature:
Will Grohmann, "Willi Baumeister - Leben und Werk", Köln 1963, p. 104, no. 894 (with fig.), there titled "Aufzug der Giganten I".
Günter W. Mühle, "Vom psychologischen Standpunkt aus - zu zwei Bildern von Willi Baumeister und Max Ernst", in: "Das Kunstwerk", vol. 4, 1950, issue 8/9, pp. 57 ff. (with fig.).
Nicola Assmann, "Willi Baumeister - Die Illustrationen. In der Bewegung mit alten außereuropäischen Kulturen auf dem Weg zu einer neuen Formensprache", Ph.D. diss., Münster 1998, p. 269.
Willi Baumeister ranks among the central figures of the European avant-garde of the first half of the 20th century. His oeuvre engages with Expressionism, Constructivism, and Abstraction, yet always retains a distinctive, autonomous formal language. With the 1947 painting "Auszug der Giganten", Baumeister presents himself at the height of his postwar creative renewal.
The title opens a field of mythic associations: "Giganten" ("giants") - the primordial titans of antiquity who battled the gods - appear here not as concrete beings but as powerful, archaic forms. The word "Auszug" ("exodus") suggests movement, a crossing of thresholds, the beginning of a journey. Created in the immediate postwar years, the idea resonates as an emblem of departure after catastrophe, a metaphor for forces leaving a devastated society to venture something new.
In oil and synthetic resin Baumeister builds a surface of great density and corporeality. The composition reads as an array of figure-like formations whose contours flicker within vibrating colour fields. Pinks, ochres, and blues, shot through with black and animated by accents of red and yellow, create a multilayered field of rhythm. The figures are not portrayed; they are born from painterly matter - a hallmark of Baumeister’s abstract-figurative phase.
At left, a circularly rhythmed structure functions like an echo or sign-form, recalling prehistoric symbols or proto-scripts. Baumeister thus links the theme of "Giganten" to a meditation on origins, archaic orders, and humanity’s collective memory.
The year 1947 was pivotal: two years after the Nazi "Malverbot" ("painting ban"), Baumeister had again resumed his work publicly. With a series of important canvases processing mythic-archaic themes in abstract-figurative terms, he rejoined the international avant-garde. His participation in the Venice Biennale (1948) and growing international reception underscore the centrality of these years to his oeuvre.
Works like "Auszug der Giganten", created during the era of reconstruction, are today among Baumeister’s most sought-after positions. They unite historical drama with a universal pictorial language that remains strikingly modern. With clear provenance, signature, and catalogue raisonné number (Beye/Baumeister 1247), the painting offers the highest authenticity and secure art-historical standing.
The rare conjunction of mythic conception, formal density, and historical significance makes "Auszug der Giganten" a key work of Baumeister’s postwar production - and a collector’s piece of exceptional appeal.