Variation on Eidos I 1938

Willi Baumeister made this painting, Variation on Eidos I, with oil on an unknown ground sometime in the mid-twentieth century, and it's a trip. I love how he’s unafraid to let the process show. You can see the texture of the paint, the strokes of his brush, and the ghost of previous marks. It's like he's inviting us into his studio, into the messy, unpredictable act of creation. Check out the way the dark green shape in the center sort of oozes and expands. It's almost like it's alive, breathing, shifting before our eyes. The paint is thick here, built up in layers, but elsewhere, like in the scumbled grey background, the paint seems almost translucent. Baumeister’s letting the painting be a painting, letting it be awkward, unresolved, and beautifully imperfect. I’m thinking about Miró, particularly his constellations series. Like Miró, Baumeister is using abstraction to tap into something deeper, something primal, and maybe even a little bit silly. Isn't that always the best art, the stuff that makes you think and feel and laugh all at the same time?