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Baumeister Collection: Oceania

wooden shield with painted eyes Battle shield, about 1900

high wooden shield with circular patterns Ceremonial shield, about 1900

One emphasis of the collection is the compilation of Oceanic objects that come from the Sepik region of New Guinea. Among other objects are also a heavy combat shield with a height of 1.4 meters (ca. 55 inches) and a slightly smaller ceremonial (dance) shield. The extraordinarily expressive ornamental and figural formal realm refers to the world of spirits and the cosmos - a thematic area that continually captivated Baumeister not only in the 1940s, but also over many decades while working on the Unknown in Art.

drapery with geometric pattern Tapa, Samoa, end of the 19th century

Wooden mask Malangan object, beg. of the 20th century

But Willi Baumeister was also interested in the coloration that, mostly earth-colored, was mixed from natural pigments. As such, blue and green occur only rarely in these objects. For him the 1.75-meter wide Polynesian tapa of cow-raffia cloth or ceremonial Malangan head sculpture from Papua New Guinea were examples of an uninhibited, civilization-remote art within a cultural area in which life and artistic processes formed a unity. Achieving this goal in the modern art of Europe was also a continual aim of Willi Baumeister.