The world-renowned Stuttgart artist Willi Baumeister is regarded trend-setting in abstraction.
Willi Baumeister's beginnings were, of course, figurative, however, after World War I they underwent a geometrical machine-like metamorphosis through the contact with Constructivism, Cubism as well as the oeuvre of Fernand Léger. With his heavily material-focused constructivist "Mauerbilder" [Wall Images] he followed this path further. A second area of influence, a sort of playful Surrealism, found expression in the figurative "Sportbildern" [Sport Images]. Willi Baumesiter found his way to abstraction while he was defamed as degenerate by the National Socialists, constructivist-concrete and surreal-free forms begin to meld, fostered by his examination of non-European art, they become pictorial surface abstractions. With the "Montaru-" and "Monturi" images he reached the peak of his development, these paintings are dominated by a freely figured black surface playfully surrounded by smaller satellites.
Works by Willi Baumeister, who doubtlessly counted among the most important artists of his generation, can be found in numerous significant museums.