Lot 261 Dα

“The 'Eulen I-II' are no more owls than the kites are kites. The former look like balloons with Japanese spirit masks sent up into the air and the latter like the 'Fliegende Kontinente' - they can also fly and their string is even visible.” (Will Grohmann, Willi Baumeister, Leben und Werk, Cologne 1963, p. 137).
A total of just seven paintings make up the group of Baumeister's works known as the owls and kites, and these include only three “Eule” pictures (Baumeister 1649-1651), which were created in 1950/1951. Will Grohmann's reading of these exceptional works places them in the context of Baumeister's “Faust” and “Phantom” works, in which night is the dominant theme, magic and madness, ghosts and demons: “Regarding the overall impression”, Grohmann writes of these works, “they are dramatically dynamic, highly varied in terms of colour, loaded to the extreme with the most diverse kinds of allusions, but more cheerful than tragic.” (op. cit., p. 137).
And, in fact, our large-format painting not only stirs associations with an owl flying in from the right, the nest with its hatchlings in the lower left-hand corner - in the black form, it is at some points also reminiscent of a ghost-like mask or the negative form of a lantern rising up into the night sky. As is so often the case, the seemingly unlimited realm of possibilities of Baumeister's figuration offers viewers an abundance of interpretations.