Willi Baumeister & Rudolf Belling

1 MAY until 20 JUN 2026
Opening – 1 MAY 2026, 6-9 pm

Willi Baumeister (1889–1955) and Rudolf Belling (1886–1972) belonged without doubt to the international avant-garde in the 1920s. They exhibited at prominent galleries such as Der Sturm, Alfred Flechtheim, and Kunstsalon Gurlitt, and their work was reviewed in important magazines like Cahiers d’art, Le Corbusier’s L’Esprit Nouveau, and Het Overzicht.
Both artists – Baumeister as a painter and Belling as a sculptor – abandoned a realistic representation of their subject, instead placing a free treatment of form at the center of their work. Thus, they shaped the early path to abstraction and, not the least through their teaching, had a profound influence on Post War generations.

Regarding Rudolf Belling, who in 1918 co-founded the November Group centered around Walter Gropius, we put a focus on the work of the 1920s. We will be showcasing three iconic pieces of 20th-century sculpture: „Dreiklang“ (1919), „Organische Formen“ (1921) and „Skulptur 23“ (1923). These were already on display in 1924 at the artist’s major solo exhibition at the Berlin Nationalgalerie, leading to the early acquisition of a wooden version of „Dreiklang“ for the museum.

Willi Baumeister will be presented with a group of works from the 1940s which is labelled „afrikanisch“. The artist increasingly moved away from the constructivist pictorial conception of the 1920s, developing rather amorphous formations that were condensed into simple pictorial signs. The use of filling compound, chalk and plaster added to the relief-like effect of these paintings such as in the large „Afrikanische Geister“ (1949), characterised by an archaic approach to form and which was part of Baumeister’s extensive contribution to the legendary Documenta I.

We are celebrating our 35-year presence in Berlin with this outstanding selection of works by two artists whom we have repeatedly featured in major solo and group exhibitions since our opening in 1991.