Fam­i­ly and Edu­ca­tion

In Stuttgart on Jan­u­ary 22, 1889 Friedrich Wil­helm (called Willi) Baumeis­ter became the fam­i­ly’s third child, born after Klara and Hans. Their father Wil­helm Baumeis­ter (1847–1931) was court mas­ter chim­ney-sweep. He had stud­ied mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing at the Stuttgart Poly­tech­nic, but ear­ly on had to take over his father’s busi­ness, then in the third gen­er­a­tion. Willi’s moth­er Anna, neé Schuler (1861–1945), was the daugh­ter of the dec­o­ra­tive painter Friedrich Wil­helm Schuler.

Anna was very gift­ed in arts. From her fam­i­ly Willi received his first artis­tic impuls­es – paired with a good deal of dili­gence and hand­i­craft skill. Already as a child his most prized toys were paper and pen­cil. Around age 16 he decid­ed to study at the art acad­e­my but at his father’s request first trained as a dec­o­ra­tive painter from 1905 to 1907, a train­ing that, due to his advanced work, he com­plet­ed ear­ly with the jour­ney­man exam.

Already dur­ing his appren­tice­ship peri­od Willi Baumeis­ter was admit­ted at the Königliche Akademie (Roy­al Acad­e­my) in 1905-06 and attend­ed Robert Poet­zel­berg­er’s draw­ing class. He took addi­tion­al lessons with artist Josef Ker­schee­in­stein­er. From Octo­ber 1907 until Sep­tem­ber 1908, he com­plet­ed his mil­i­tary ser­vice. He then con­tin­ued his stud­ies at the acad­e­my and first attend­ed Adolf Hölzel’s com­po­si­tion class until 1912. There he met Oskar Schlem­mer (1888–1943) and Otto Mey­er-Amden (1885–1933), with whom he cul­ti­vat­ed life­long friend­ships.

First Paths out of Stuttgart

In spring 1911 Baumeis­ter stud­ied for three months at the Cer­cle Inter­na­tion­al des Beaux-Arts (Inter­na­tion­al Fine Arts Asso­ci­a­tion) in Paris. After his return he moved into his first stu­dio in Stuttgart at Less­ingstrasse 3. In Sep­tem­ber 1912 he moved to Amden for 15 months. In 1913 he par­tic­i­pat­ed for the first time in an exhi­bi­tion at the gallery Der Sturm in Berlin and in 1914 pro­duced four wall paint­ings for the Cologne Werk­bund Exhi­bi­tion. He also trav­eled to Ams­ter­dam, Lon­don, and Paris.

Ser­vice in World War I

From Novem­ber 1914 until Decem­ber 1918 Willi Baumeis­ter served in the war, which took him to the Balka­ns, Ukraine, and the Cau­ca­sus. Nonethe­less he also par­tic­i­pat­ed in exhi­bi­tions dur­ing the war years. In 1915 he met Oskar Kokosch­ka and the archi­tect Adolf Loos in Vien­na.

Start of the Artist Career

After return­ing from World War I he resumed his stud­ies at the Stuttgart Art Acad­e­my in 1920 and com­plet­ed them in 1922. But his unique artis­tic career had already begun in 1913-114 – and con­tin­ued with first suc­cess­es and recog­ni­tion in 1919–1927.