Baumeister, Willi Stuttgart 1889 - 1955 Scherzo. 1950/51. Oil with resin and filler on fibre. 54 x 65cm. Signed and dated bottom left: Baumeister 51. Verso: Signed, dated and titled once more with measurements: W Baumeister, 1950, Scherzo, 65 x 54cm. Craftman's frame Provenance: Dr. Gonser, Stuttgart Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett Roman Norbert Ketterer, Stuttgart Marlborough Fine Art Ltd, London Gallery Gunzenhauser, Munich Rhenish entrepeneural collection Exhibitions: Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne 1965, Cat. p. 18, Cat.-No. 45 Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe 1965, Cat. p. 18, Cat.-No. 45 Akademie der Künste, Berlin 1965, Cat. p. 41, No. 48 Galerie Gunzenhauser, Munich 1986, Cat. S. 10, No. 14, Fig. p. 16 Literature: Will Grohmann, Willi Baumeister - Leben und Werk, Köln, 1963, Cat.-no. 763 (as "Scherzo linear"), Fig. p. 297 Aus den Beständen der Galerie, Cat. 5, Gallery Gunzenhauser, Munich, 1982, Fig. p. 97 Peter Beye und Felicitas Baumeister, Willi Baumeister - Werkkatalog der Gemälde, Bd. II, Ed. v. Archiv Baumeister, Ostfildern 2002, C.R.-No. 1095, Fig. p. 431 "Comparing the works of Baumeister with those of Paul Klee is certainly worthwhile. The same high culture of technique, the same chance to jump over from the painterly, from the art of making to invention. The same, as it seems, "double artistic" talent. Similar, even if in Klee's case a bit less, adoption of alien worlds (...). Baumeister's series' often flowed into one another or were picked up again, his complete work in this correlation of series has a sort of polyphony. If one takes into consideration the risk of Baumeister's forms, this lonely path with no acknowledgement and no guide, the series becomes totally understandable. It is impossible to find one's own language without modulating freely and check oneself through ever so often. This is how the paintings recieved their full sound, without excluding each other. The visible significance of their gestures defines their placidity. Therefore, an unproven, and momentarily unprovable allegation is to be made: in Baumeisters paintings, notwithstanding Troja and Agamemnon, a hidden archaic approach, for this swabian presumably innate classicism." (Gert von der Osten, in: Exhib.-Cat. Willi Baumeister - Gemälde und Zeichnungen; Cologne, 1965, p. 10).