Graphik Works

In rela­tion to his paint­ings and draw­ings, Willi Baumeis­ter’s graph­ic print oeu­vre occu­pies a mod­est space with­in his total pro­duc­tion. Nonethe­less, the artis­tic sig­nif­i­cance of the approx­i­mate­ly 150 lith­o­graphs, about 70 seri­graphs, 9 etch­ings, and slight­ly few­er wood­cuts and linocuts is undis­put­ed. Many themes and phas­es of his artis­tic devel­op­ment recur in these prints, upon which the great inter­est among col­lec­tors has also been estab­lished.

Gen­uine and Inde­pen­dent

Baumeis­ter brought some inven­tions to even greater per­fec­tion in his graph­ic works than in his paint­ings. As in the case of the draw­ings, the orig­i­nal graph­ics pro­duced by Baumeis­ter in lith­o­g­ra­phy, etch­ing, or silkscreen are seen as gen­uine and inde­pen­dent works of art.

The spe­cial char­ac­ter of the graph­ic works is par­tic­u­lar­ly expressed where he var­ied and para­phrased the paint­ings’ the­mat­ic and for­mal realms in the seri­graphs and lith­o­graphs and there­by arrived at autonomous results.

Art for Every­one

Apart from the artis­tic aims, the print edi­tions also allowed Willi Baumeis­ter to pur­sue the goal of mak­ing his art acces­si­ble to a broad­er cir­cle of enthu­si­asts who were of more mod­est means. Here he was part of a 500 year-old tra­di­tion that main­tains its high rat­ing today.

Not all works, how­ev­er, were pro­duced in a com­plete edi­tion of between 50 and 100 copies. Some only exist as proofs and of oth­ers there are only a few copies.

Lith­o­grapy

Between 1919 and 1943 lith­o­g­ra­phy (along with the relat­ed off­set print­ing) was the only orig­i­nal graph­ic print­ing method that Willi Baumeis­ter used. By 1955 he had pro­duced a total of 150 leaves that, in addi­tion to the paint­ings, con­tribute impor­tant accents to the cor­re­spond­ing work phase.

Since at least in the ini­tial years he achieved lit­tle def­i­nite char­ac­ter by chance in his works, he large­ly reject­ed the wood­block and linocut tech­niques as well as etch­ing.

Clear and Con­sol­i­dat­ed: The Ear­ly Works

He endowed the ear­li­est lith­o­graph­ic leaves of 1919 to 1922 with the ters­est of pic­to­r­i­al means (e.g. Fig­ure, 1920 — Apol­lo, 1922). For him, strokes and shad­ing entire­ly in black on toned paper were the appro­pri­ate forms of expres­sion for the desired abstrac­tion of the human fig­ure and struc­tur­ing of the pic­ture sur­face.

He trans­lat­ed the char­ac­ter­is­tic mate­ri­al­i­ty that pre­oc­cu­pied him in the Wall Pic­tures dur­ing these years into the lith­o­graph, using shad­ing, scored and black­ened sur­faces, and thin and ampli­fied out­lines. This result­ed – even more so than in the draw­ings – in clear, for­mal­ly extreme­ly con­sol­i­dat­ed com­po­si­tions.

The ear­li­est pre­served chro­molith­o­g­ra­phy, “Fig­ure and Cir­cu­lar Seg­ment”, dates from 1925 and remained the only one until 1936.

More Flow­ing Forms and Stronger Abstrac­tion

Only a few lith­o­graphs are pre­served from the Frank­furt peri­od between 1928 and 1933 (e.g. Ath­letes at Rest, 1928).

We know from the draw­ings that Baumeis­ter destroyed numer­ous of his ath­lete ren­der­ings because they lat­er appeared too nat­u­ral­is­tic to him. We might pre­sume the same here, too, although it was no doubt chiefly a lack of time that kept him from mak­ing lith­o­graphs. He increas­ing­ly turned to the tech­nique again around 1934, after los­ing his teach­ing posi­tion.

In con­trast to the geo­metri­cized fig­ures of the 1920s, he was now inter­est­ed in move­ment, with­out los­ing the extreme reduc­tion of the draw­ing. Between 1934 and 1937, the inten­si­fied use of grad­u­at­ed tonal val­ues, an even clear­er sur­face empha­sis (Ten­nis Play­ers, 1935 — Painter, 1935/36) and a drawn qual­i­ty bor­der­ing on the non­rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al (Line Fig­ure, 1937) char­ac­ter­ized the graph­ic works.

Mark­ing the end of this phase are a few Line Fig­ures and com­po­si­tions that Baumeis­ter called Form­lings and whose kin­ship with the Ideograms in the paint­ings is appar­ent.

Paint­ing Pro­hi­bi­tion

In the years after the Munich Degen­er­ate Art, in which pic­tures by him were also shown, and after he was imposed with a ban on paint­ing and exhibit­ing, Baumeis­ter pro­duced fur­ther lith­o­graphs. Along­side the lack of mate­ri­als, the cir­cu­la­tion of graph­ic works would have meant an addi­tion­al dan­ger.

After World War II

In 1946 Baumeis­ter pro­duced the 12-lith­o­graph port­fo­lio “Salome and the Prophet” in which he pub­lished a few of the 1943 Bib­li­cal illus­tra­tion series draw­ings. He cer­tain­ly retained the motifs from the wartime sketch­es, although for­mal­ly he worked out even clear­er com­po­si­tions and fig­u­ra­tions that, in regard to a cir­cu­la­tion of the port­fo­lios, was also under­stand­able and sen­si­ble.

In two oth­er port­fo­lios of 1946 and 1947, he like­wise took motifs from pre­vi­ous years’ draw­ings, includ­ing scenes from Africa, Fig­ure Walls, and oth­er abstract, chiefly fig­ur­al ren­der­ings.

Pri­ma­ry col­ors as well as green now emerged in some leaves again in the form of water­col­ored Islands that con­cur­rent­ly appeared in many paint­ings and silkscreen prints (e.g. Pri­mor­dial Forms, 1947). But even with­out the use of col­or, Baumeis­ter real­ized works with high­ly nuanced tonal val­ues by using blur­ring, chalk struc­tures, and the frot­tage tech­nique.

The Engage­ment with Sur­face and Col­or

In the last years Baumeis­ter turned more strong­ly to the seri­graph which offered him a much broad­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­duce col­or graph­ic works. By con­trast, he large­ly avoid­ed intense col­oration in the lith­o­graphs and increas­ing­ly worked with light tonal plates and a grainy lith­o­g­ra­phy stone to reduce con­trasts.

The leaves “Cru­ci­fix­ion” (1952) and “Safer” (1953) most close­ly cor­re­spond to the artist’s inten­tion. At that time he could also make the desired relief struc­tures in lith­o­graph with the means men­tioned above. Now it was even pos­si­ble for him to trans­late the use of sand in his paint­ings into the lan­guage of the graph­ic print.

The mon­u­men­tal “Cru­ci­fix­ion” rep­re­sents a cli­max in Baumeis­ter’s lith­o­graphs. It is the largest graph­ic print of all and of great sug­ges­tive pow­er. Here the print is in no way infe­ri­or to the cor­re­spond­ing paint­ing of the same year.

Plea­sure in Exper­i­ment­ing

In the last lith­o­graphs deal­ing with the “Aru” and “Han‑i” themes, which Baumeis­ter only made into an edi­tion as an excep­tion, he exper­i­ment­ed with cutout sten­cils. This again reveals that he con­stant­ly searched for new ways to real­ize his artis­tic inten­tions. In the two Stuttgart print­ers, Erich Mönch and Luit­pold Domberg­er, he had also found two con­ge­nial part­ners.

Etch­ing

The etch­ing as well as oth­er etch (= eat­en) and incis­ing tech­niques play no appre­cia­ble role in Willi Baumeis­ter’s graph­ic print work. Mere­ly nine known works exist – three apiece from 1943, 1947, and 1952.

The old­er ones (e.g. Dia­log OMBU and Relief Fig­ures in Dia­logue, both 1947) are direct­ly linked to the illus­tra­tion series on which Baumeis­ter worked dur­ing the last war years and short­ly there­after and which sur­vive in exten­sive draw­ings and lith­o­graphs.

The more recent leaves deal with attempts to trans­late line fig­u­ra­tions, pla­nar com­po­si­tions, and tonal struc­tures into the lan­guage of etch­ing. He was obvi­ous­ly dis­sat­is­fied with the results (e.g. Mon­taru, 1952).

In all cas­es these are undoubt­ed­ly the artist’s attempts – exper­i­ments that he did not pur­sue fur­ther. We can assume that the indi­vid­ual stroke lines both­ered him and in par­tic­u­lar, that the effects he was able to achieve in oth­er orig­i­nal graph­ic tech­niques and in paint­ing were not sat­is­fac­to­ry in etch­ing. As such, only a few exam­ples of each of the exist­ing works were also print­ed.

The aquatint tech­nique would have undoubt­ed­ly offered him bet­ter artis­tic pos­si­bil­i­ties, but pre­sum­ably there was no suit­able intaglio work­shop avail­able to him. In par­tic­u­lar, serig­ra­phy, which Baumeis­ter dis­cov­ered around 1950, seemed con­sid­er­ably bet­ter suit­ed to him in every respect.

Artist and Hand Work­er

Fur­ther­more, an out­stand­ing coop­er­a­tion with the print­er was essen­tial. Baumeis­ter found this in 1950 in Luit­pold (Pol­di) Domberg­er, who coin­ci­den­tal­ly had set up his work­shop in the same ruin that housed Baumeis­ter’s stu­dio. Already in 1952 they exhib­it­ed the fruits of their col­lab­o­ra­tive work in the Hack­er Gallery in New York.

For Willi Baumeis­ter, the hand­craft­ed always held – as we know from the ori­gins of the first wall pic­tures and ear­li­est typo­graph­i­cal works – a great deal of impor­tance. In his book “The Unknown in Art”, he wrote in 1947 that in the wake of the new eval­u­a­tion of line and plane, the ele­men­tary-hand­craft­ed under­went a renais­sance with­in “high” art.

An Impor­tant Medi­um in Baumeis­ter’s Pro­duc­tion

Fol­low­ing the first eight leaves pro­duced in 1950, the num­ber of silkscreen prints in Baumeis­ter’s oeu­vre steadi­ly increased. Pri­or to his death in August, he pro­duced 18 in 1955 alone. At the same time, their total num­ber notice­ably exceed­ed that of the lith­o­graphs. This reveals that Baumeis­ter’s inten­tions were chiefly real­iz­able with the silkscreen print.

In terms of con­tent we can estab­lish – sim­i­lar to the remain­ing graph­ic works and draw­ings – that he usu­al­ly var­ied the motifs of his paint­ings and trans­lat­ed their con­tent into the syn­tax of the silkscreen print. Only in the last works did he resort to draw­ings from the 1943 illus­tra­tion series.