The Kupferstichkabinett opens a comprehensive museum exhibition of works by Willi Baumeister
(Artdaily.org)

The Kupferstichkabinett presents Willi Baumeister’s drawings in the first comprehensive museum exhibition of his work in Berlin since his major retrospective at the Neue Nationalgalerie in 1989. Born in 1889 in Stuttgart, Baumeister was a passionate and meticulous draftsman throughout his life. This is particularly true of the artist’s period of ‘inner emigration’ during the Nazi era, when it was nearly impossible for him to paint in the studio. Instead, he covertly made hundreds of drawings in Bad Urach in the Swabian Alps. But even in the preceding years – Baumeister was awarded a professorship by the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main in 1928 – drawing was an essential part of his work. It served fundamentally not only as a preparation for painting or as a method of reflecting thereupon. Nor was it merely used to develop print editions. Rather, the drawings – at times in colour or made on colo