Fundación Caja Madrid presents today the first retrospective exhibition of German artist Willi Baumeister, on view through February 22, 2004. The exhibition was organized together with the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the Caja Madrid Foundation and the Städtische Galerie Im Lenbachhaus of Munich, curated by Tomás Llorens and Helmut Friedl. The exhibition will later travel to Munich.

Willi Baumeister was born in Stuttgart in 1889. After training as a decorative painter, he entered the School of Fine Arts of his native city, in 1909. There he studied with Adolf Holzel and met Oskar Schlemmer and Otto Meyer-Amden, with whom he maintained a long friendship. In 1911, he traveled toParis for the first time and studied drawing there for three months. The following year he held his first ever exhibition at the Galerie Neupert in Zurich and two years later, exhibited in the First German Autumn Salon, held in Berlin.

During the First World War, he fought in the Balkans and in the Caucasus. On his return to Stuttgart, he became part of the Üecht group with Schlemmer, Gottfried Graff, Edmund Daniel Kinzinger, Albert Müller and Hans Siegel.