Since 2001 Galerie Fred Jahn has been collaborating directly with the estate of the Willi Baumeister Foundation in Stuttgart and is increasingly devoted to the artist's drawings. Willi Baumeister found his subjects in archaic mythologies and foreign cultures, symbols and drawings. He thus dealt with prehistoric artefacts, wall painting, and with Asian and African art. With the appearance of the organic around the middle of his productive period, the subject of metamorphosis emerged, which, encouraged by Goethe’s poem “The Metamorphosis of the Plant” from 1799, had a significant effect on countless artists. Similar to Paul Klee, the metamorphoses of Baumeister’s forms belong to an intellectual and artistic tradition which states that natural and artistic processes run parallel, and that nature and art both pursue creative, inherently logical laws, organising themselves accordingly.

In searching for the origin of the creation of artistic forms, for the “primal moment”, so to speak, the motif of metamorphosis also serves as the starting point for reflection on the artistic as such. His book from 1947, “The Unknown in Art”, carries within the title a subject that Baumeister explored all his life. In order to investigate this idea, he found adequate formal and technical solutions for each group of his works. Initially representational and post-impressionistic, his work then changed its visual language to that of constructivism. Later organic forms appeared, the work became more painterly, more fluid, until he finally arrived at his characteristic abstract forms. He considered a formal problem or a subject from multiple angles, which could result in using a piece of hardboard or a cardboard box as a replacement for the classical canvas. He achieved the textures that were important to him by using sand, resin, paint and putty.   Read More