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EMIL SCHUMACHER
MUSEUM HAGEN

Illustration nach einer Serigrafie von dem Motiv ARU 7, 1955, von Willi Baumeister. Grafische Bearbeitung mit freundlicher Genehmigung durch das Archiv Baumeister im Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025

PARIS 1955
GERMAN ABSTRACTS IN THE CENTRE OF MODERNITY

April 13 to August 3, 2025

German abstracts in Paris - in 1955! The exhibition “Peintures et sculptures non figuratives en Allemagne d'aujourd'hui” at the Cercle Volney in Paris was a real novelty and was already the subject of controversial debate among contemporaries in Germany. Today it is considered legendary in German art history. The organizers were the Parisian gallery owner René Drouin and the chairman of the West German Artists' Association Wilhelm Wessel from Iserlohn.
70 years after the memorable event, the Paris show is being reconstructed and comprehensively honored for the first time in a museum presentation. The exhibition rediscovers important artistic positions from the 1950s that have been almost unjustly forgotten today.
The remarkable show with 98 works by 37 abstract artists brought together the most important artistic positions of their time in 1955 at the Cercle Volney near the Paris Opera just ten years after the end of National Socialism.

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INNOVATION OR REPLACEMENT?

INNOVATION OR REPLACEMENT?
Art technological research on new painting materials between 1930 and 1955 using the example of Willi Baumeister (duration 2022-2027)

Using the example of the Stuttgart artist and academy professor Willi Baumeister (1889-1955), the research project investigates how the scarcity of traditional painting materials during the Second World War affected his choice of materials and the current state of preservation of his paintings. Of particular interest are the new materials introduced during the Second World War, such as early synthetic binders, new types of paint and painting supports such as hardboard: did he see them exclusively as temporary - and perhaps inferior - substitutes for traditional materials, or were they able to establish themselves as innovative materials in his art even after the end of the war? How did these material changes affect the state of preservation of his paintings?

 

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PROCESSING THE WRITTEN ESTATE OF FRITZ SEITZ

Foto: Ester Hagenlocher, Fritz Seitz, Alte Apotheke in Nusse bei Lübeck, 2014

PROCESSING THE WRITTEN ESTATE OF FRITZ SEITZ | Cooperation of University of Oregon, U.S.A. and Willi Baumeister Stiftung

The written estate and most of the works of the artist Fritz Seitz (1926–2017), a student of Willi Baumeister from 1950 to 1954, have been housed in the Willi Baumeister Foundation since 2015. Seitz's unique and innovative approach to the subject of Color, which he developed from the 1960s onwards, significantly contributes to the field.

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