Quotes about Willi Baumeis­ter

Le Cor­busier
(1931)

“Je suis heureux de voir la belle tenue de vos oeu­vres, ici rassem­blés. Tout cela est émine­ment pic­tur­al. Vos dessins sont très beaux. Dès 1920, votre départ vous êtes sain et inter­es­sant. Vous allez à l’avenir avec sécu­rité.” [I am hap­py to see the won­der­ful atti­tude of your works that are pre­sent­ed here. All this is emi­nent­ly pic­to­r­i­al. Your draw­ings are very beau­ti­ful. Since your start in 1920 you are sound and inter­est­ing. You are going to have a future, with cer­tain­ty.]

(Let­ter to Baumeis­ter, Feb­ru­ary 1931)

Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky
(1935)

“Willi Baumeis­ter’s art belongs to the healthy, nat­ur­al, appeal­ing appear­ances. I am con­vinced that this art, also for a lay­man, if only uncon­scious­ly, must awak­en the impres­sion of a cre­ative activ­i­ty that grows from a healthy ground and stands firm­ly on its own two feet. It is a nat­ur­al pos­i­tive ener­gy that, in its liv­ing calm, remains the vic­tor despite every­thing.”

(Cat­a­logue to the W.B. exhi­bi­tion, Milan 1935 – trans­lat­ed from Boehm (1995))

Her­bert Read
(1935)

“There are two trends in mod­ern art: the neg­a­tive trend is destruc­tive in its striv­ings […] the oth­er mod­ern trend, the pos­i­tive trend, is also an art direc­tion of the tran­si­tion­al peri­od, but its ten­den­cy is recep­tive and pre­serv­ing […] to this pos­i­tive direc­tion belongs Willi Baumeis­ter’s art, an art that is con­struc­tive, cre­ative, and prophet­ic.”

(Cat­a­logue to the W.B. exhi­bi­tion, Milan 1935)

Fer­nand Léger
(1949)

“Le nom de Baumeis­ter, par­mi ceux de l’art mod­erne alle­mand, tient à mes yeux une place extrême­ment impor­tante … Et il a résol­u­ment fait son chemin en dehors de l’ex­pres­sion­isme alle­mand, si envahissant et si char­ac­téris­tique.” [In my eyes, the name Baumeis­ter takes an extreme­ly impor­tant place among those of mod­ern Ger­man artists … And he has res­olute­ly made his path apart from Ger­man expres­sion­ism, very per­sis­tent and char­ac­ter­is­tic.]

(L’Age Nou­veau, 44, 1949 – Trans­la­tion quot­ed from Boehm (1995))

Michel Seuphor
(1950)

“Baumeis­ter’s art has always strived for the uni­ver­sal […] is much rich­er today than it was in the era of the wall pic­tures. It is uni­ver­sal in anoth­er way: much more inward­ly than ear­li­er. One now comes into direct con­tact with the human. One sees in these new works by Baumeis­ter that the con­fused nois­es of the world, its alarms, threats, dis­ap­point­ments fade in the artist’s stu­dio like waves on the shore and become an orga­nized play on the can­vas: the noise of the cen­tu­ry is com­plete­ly cap­tured in a heart­beat whose irreg­u­lar reg­u­lar­i­ty is life itself. Baumeis­ter’s new work pos­sess­es this uni­ver­sal­i­ty: the rhythm of blood in the organ­ism of the world.”

(Man­u­script, 1950, in the Baumeis­ter Archive – Trans­la­tion quot­ed from Boehm (1995))

Will Grohmann
(1959)

“He was the most Euro­pean of Ger­man painters. So it is no won­der that he received no hon­ors dur­ing his life­time in Ger­many.”

(“doc­u­men­ta” cat­a­logue, Kas­sel 1959)

HAP Grieshaber
(1959)

“Only my friends from the young West had the courage to say: Ger­many art after 1945 begins with Baumeis­ter! […] No man fought for the lib­er­a­tion of art in our coun­try like W.B. Every jury of the Ger­man Artist Union [Deutsch­er Kün­stler­bund] still lives on his bon mots: It does­n’t please me, but it must be includ­ed […].”

(Address to the open­ing of the Baumeis­ter exhi­bi­tion, Galerie Lutz & Mey­er, Stuttgart, April 25, 1959)

Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung / Hans Kinkel
(1989)

“He was not just a fig­ure, but a pil­lar, of the art scene in which guys like him achieved a rar­i­ty val­ue and leg­endary sta­tus.”

(Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung, Jan­u­ary 20, 1989)