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Willi Baumeister
Willi Baumeister mit seinen Schülern

Pro­fes­sor Willi Baumeis­ter

Baumeis­ter as Instruc­tor

n his near­ly 40-year artis­tic career, Willi Baumeis­ter was called twice to teach at an art acad­e­my. Even so, the con­tent and accom­pa­ny­ing cir­cum­stances of both teach­ing assign­ments could not have been more dif­fer­ent.

Frank­furt am Main 1928 to 1933

The first pro­fes­sor­ship that took him to Frank­furt am Main between 1928 and 1933 result­ed from his work as a typog­ra­ph­er in the mid 1920s and as a co-inven­tor of new styles in com­mer­cial art in Ger­many.

Photo: black and white: Class Baumeister, Art School, Frankfurt am Main, 1930/1931.
Class Baumeis­ter, Art School, Frank­furt am Main, 1930/1931. Pho­to: Mar­ta Hoepffn­er (Inven­to­ry No. ab-f-018–126-sn)
© Archiv Baumeis­ter at the Kun­st­mu­se­um Stuttgart
Photo: black and white: Willi Baumeister with his students
Willi Baumeis­ter, Paran G’schrey and Klaus Erler, Stuttgart State Willi Baumeis­ter, Paran G’schrey and Klaus Erler, Acad­e­my of Fine Arts, 1948. Pho­to: Renate Lang (Inven­to­ry No. ab-f-018–014-sw)
© Archiv Baumeis­ter at the Kun­st­mu­se­um Stuttgart

Stuttgart 1946 to 1955

The sec­ond appoint­ment occurred in his home­town Stuttgart between 1946 and 1955 and was based on his artis­tic con­tri­bu­tion to the devel­op­ment of mod­ern paint­ing in Europe, his irre­proach­able con­duct dur­ing the Nazi peri­od, and the high renown he enjoyed after 1945.

The end of the Frank­furt peri­od was marked by the brusque dis­missal from the teach­ing posi­tion, as his think­ing and his art did not fit into the cul­tur­al frame­work of the Nation­al Social­ists. His Stuttgart pro­fes­sor­ship end­ed when he retired as emer­i­tus, which, how­ev­er, was soon fol­lowed by Baumeis­ter’s death in August 1955.