Heinz Bodamer (born 1927) attended Baumeister's class from 1946 to 1950. His activities include working as a commercial artist and as an independent painter and graphic artist in Stuttgart.
For the inaugural summer semester in 1946, the Stuttgart Academy of Arts at the Weißenhof was to some extent rebuilt. The students participated a good deal in the reconstruction.
Through the works I submitted, I was admitted to the painting class and first enrolled with Prof. Steisslinger. But I very soon realized that my decision was not a good one, even though Prof. Steisslinger was an esteemed thoroughbred painter. After a semester I then switched to Prof. Baumeister's [class] and became his student in winter semester of 1946. My time as Prof. Baumeister's student lasted eight semesters, until 1950. The first impressions were that Baumeister students painted very versatilely. This impressed me right away, but more so Baumeister himself and his entire persona.
The Didactic Boards present Baumeister's elementary basic teachings as far as I can still remember and were made for an academy exhibition at the Weißenhof. With this basic theory as a foundation, Baumeister then deepened and extended the Advanced School he established in his book, The Unknown in Art. The book was published in 1947 and we read it eagerly. Forty years later I read his book again with the same enthusiasm and see his pictures as a new, sympathetic art form.
Baumeister once said that his paintings wanted to be understood as pictures for pure vision. This expression is so easily said, but in my opinion, meditating with nothing but forms and colors, with pure painting, is in fact the most difficult.
In 1951 I went with a letter of recommendation from Baumeister on a study trip to Paris. Afterwards I was a student of [Erich] Heckel and [Helmut Andreas Paul or [HAP] Grieshaber at the Karlsruhe Academy of Arts and there received a state scholarship for the Roman Academy of Arts. During a study stay in London I visited Henry Moore.
(From a letter to Wolfgang Kermer, dated December 12, 1987, quoted from Kermer 1992, p. 182)