Peter Grau:
Eye for the Soloists

Peter Grau (1928–2016) attend­ed Baumeis­ter’s class from 1946 to 1953. From 1968 to 1994 he was pro­fes­sor for gen­er­al art train­ing at the Stuttgart Acad­e­my.

Baumeis­ter’s first gen­er­a­tion of stu­dents 46–47, set up in the old build­ing in the rooms of the what was then to become the Drey­er class, was very live­ly, open, and com­rade­ly, even if there were harsh dis­cus­sions now and then. In Baumeis­ter I came to know a teacher who – always aware of his path and refer­ring us to Cézanne and Picas­so – def­i­nite­ly tol­er­at­ed when works deriv­ing from oth­er trends were pro­duced in his class. His staunch belief was that from Giot­to up to Cézanne was the rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al epoch, but from Cézanne on was the non­rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al one. That, how­ev­er, did not keep him from allow­ing excep­tions to this rule and affirm­ing them…

I owe to him the sharp­en­ing of my eye for the ele­ments of a pic­ture’s com­po­si­tion, knowl­edge of sur­face ten­sions that even can be applied to the design of spa­tial depth. I own to him the sharp­en­ing of my eye for the soloists – (the dom­i­nat­ing forms) – in a pic­ture’s struc­ture and its size (dimen­sions), and place­ment in the pic­ture space. To him and the ancient Chi­nese I owe the insight that the soloist acts most strong­ly when it appears where it is not expect­ed, that small shifts in a pic­ture com­po­si­tion rep­re­sent no dis­ad­van­tage in the face of the laws of log­i­cal inter­con­nec­tion, but rather, that these mis­takes can first bring the pic­ture to life. (Neg­a­tive exam­ple: the cur­rent com­put­er art). His repu­di­a­tion of sym­met­ri­cal com­po­si­tions is to be explained with his extreme­ly fine sense for the free play of ener­gies. The art of pro­ceed­ing with the sketch­ing of a pic­ture – (“…every­thing total­ly black from all the strokes…”) – he crit­i­cized in his teacher Hölzel as too restrict­ing and no longer allow­ing for changes.

I had a unique expe­ri­ence dur­ing one of the many pri­vate vis­its I paid him in his home and neigh­bor­ing stu­dio house. Baumeis­ter was appar­ent­ly very sen­si­tive to changes in the weath­er, as low [baro­met­ric] pres­sure put him in a sad mood. When it driz­zled he spoke about things that one oth­er­wise did not hear about from him. In short, he had just com­plet­ed an oil paint­ing, a pre­cur­sor to the Mon­taru series that pre­sent­ed an unusu­al­ly heavy, black block in the low­er right cor­ner. I noticed it because Baumeis­ter oth­er­wise com­posed with a sleep­walk­er-sure sense for bal­ance. To my query he explained that this pic­ture was a bat­tle against him­self, a thorn in the side, and a great agony. These words – cor­rect­ly under­stood – are com­plete­ly mon­strous and sig­ni­fy a rebel­lion against laws that are stronger than the human. I also do not know whether he left the pic­ture as it was, as I have not seen it since then.