Tennisspieler auf Gelb (Tennis Player on Yellow)

Willi Baumeister

Stuttgart, Germany, 1889 - 1955

In Willi Baumeister’s artistic career, two series really stand out; the one dedicated to the painter and his model and the one on sport. The representation of different kinds of sport was no simple accident, since in the first third of the 20th century a wide range of artists turned their attention to this kind of pastime, which then became part of their respective iconographic repertories. After a period in which he approached Geometric Abstraction, the 1930s saw Baumeister leaning more towards organic forms, particularly influenced by the aesthetic of the cave paintings in the Levante area of Spain, executed as canvas paintings through the use of matter created from a mixture of sand, pigments, synthetic resins and varnishes. Tennisspieler auf Gelb (Tennis Player on Yellow) is part of the Sportbilder II series (1932-1938), specifically the group of tennis paintings, which developed and accentuated the complexity of the basic premises the artist had laid down from 1930 onwards, also affecting the possibilities offered by the figure in motion.

Paloma Esteban Leal

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