Saturday, March 28, 2009

Artist of the Day: WILLI BAUMEISTER/"Mortaruru with Red Overhead"


Large egg-shaped blots of colour appear on the surface of this picture. Their relationship to each other - both formalistically and colouristically - is unclear, creating a disjointed feeling of tension and uneasiness. The small appendages are connected to the parent blocks with delicate, fragile lines that make them seem like mathematically induced organic growths.

Baumeister's early works were influenced by Fernand Leger and others, but he went on to develop a personal form of expression that has been termed 'abstract Surrealism'. He was pretty much concerned with the philosophy of art, believing that freely imagined forms could provide images relationg to the deepest, primitive roots of humanity - ideas which he set out in his 1947 book Das Unbekannte in der Kunst ('The Unknown in Art'). His paintings are not entirely subjectless, but are intended as representation of 'other' realities.

SOURCE: The Art Book

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