Mary Bauermeister

Bauermeister in 2012

Bauermeister in 2019

Bauermeister and her son Simon Stockhausen in 2019

Mary Hilde Ruth Bauermeister (born 7 September 1934) is a German artist who works in sculpture, drawing, installation, performance, and music. Influenced by Fluxus artists and Nouveau Réalisme, her work addresses esoteric issues of how information is transferable through society. "I only followed an inner drive to express what was not yet there, in reality or thought", she said of her practice. "To make art was more a finding, searching process than a knowing." Since the 1970s, her work has concentrated on the themes surrounding New Age spirituality, specifically geomancy, the divine interpretation of lines on the ground.^[1]

Biography[]

Early life and artistic beginnings[]

Mary Bauermeister was born in Frankfurt am Main to Wolf Bauermeister, a professor of genetics and anthropology, and Laura Bauermeister, a singer.^[2][3]

Bauermeister was artistically influenced in secondary school (1946 to 1954) by her drawing teacher, Günter Ott. She studied in 1954–55 at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm and in 1955–56 at the Staatlichen Schule für Kunst und Handwerk in Saarbrücken. She settled in Cologne in the mid-1950s.^[4] In 1957 she met her future husband, the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.^[4]

In 1960, in her studio at Lintgasse 28 in Cologne, she launched a series of gatherings of members of the evolving global artistic movement Fluxus.^[5][6] At her invitation, avant-garde poets, composers and visual artists such as Hans G. Helms, David Tudor, John Cage, Christo, Wolf Vostell, George Brecht, and Nam June Paik organised unconventional concerts of the "newest music", readings, exhibits, and actions. These activities have been described as "comparatively non-hierarchical exchanges of information across national, disciplinary and age boundaries", contributing in that way to the character of the Fluxus movement which had been developing during the 1950s.^[7]

In 1961, she took part in Karlheinz Stockhausen's composition course at the Internationale Ferienkursen für Neue Musik in Darmstadt.^[8] Later that same year she collaborated with Stockhausen in a theatre piece titled Originale (Originals), which was given twelve performances at the Theater am Dom, Cologne, from 26 October to 6 November 1961. Amongst the performers were Bauermeister herself (as The Painter), Nam June Paik (Actions), David Tudor (piano and percussion), and Hans G. Helms (The Poet).^[9] In 1962 she had her first solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam with a simultaneous day-long performance of electronic music under Stockhausen's direction. On 3 April 1967, in San Francisco, she married Stockhausen, with whom she had two children: Julika (born 22 January 1966) and Simon (born 5 June 1967).^[10] They were divorced in 1972.^[11] She has two younger daughters, Sophie (born July 1972, father David C. Johnson) and Esther (born 1974, father  [Wikidata]).^[12]

Residence in New York[]

Bauermeister, Perhaps (1965)

Drawn by the vitality of the Pop Art movement, in October 1962 Bauermeister relocated to New York City. In the artistic circles of Pop Art, Nouveau Réalisme and Fluxus, she maintained friendships with Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely. In New York Bauermeister enjoyed considerable artistic success. Since 1964 she has exhibited regularly at the Galeria Bonino on 57th Street.

Later life[]

In the 1970s, Bauermeister returned to Germany and began to occupy herself with marginal sciences, for example geomancy, the science of energy structures in the earth.^[13] She used the knowledge she garnered from these studies for the planning of gardens, which she implemented for public and private clients throughout the world.^[13] The artist now lives in Rösrath near Cologne.

On the occasion of her 70th birthday in September 2004, the Cologne Museum Ludwig acquired her 1963 wall installation Needless Needles and arranged a display of the work for several months.^[3] In 2019, Museum Ludwig acquired three more works by Bauermeister, Rundes Wabenbild, Magnetbild Schwarz-Weiss and the relating 34 sketches Möglichkeiten Serieller Malerei. In 2018 Mary Bauermeister signed an exclusive contract with the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in Chelsea, Manhattan.^[3]

Honours[]

On 15 June 2020, Bauermeister was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit for her contributions to Germany's post-war art scene.^[14][15]

Exhibitions[]

Source:^[3]

• 1964 "Mary Bauermeister – paintings and constructions" Galerie Bonino, Buenos Aires
• 1965 "Linsenkästen" Galerie Bonino, Buenos Aires
• 1967 "Linsenkästen" II Galerie Bonino, Buenos Aires
• 1972 First retrospective in Mittelrhein-Museum, Koblenz
• 1972 Galerie Arturo Schwarz in Mailand
• 1985 Participation in the International Crystallography Congress and presentation of her works
• 1986 Kölner Kunstverein
• 2004 Museum Ludwig in Cologne
• 2010 Wilhelm Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen

Bibliography[]

See also[]

• List of German women artists

References[]

Sources

• Bauermeister, Mary (2011). Ich hänge im Triolengitter: Mein Leben mit Karlheinz Stockhausen. Munich: Edition Elke Heidenreich bei C. Bertelsmann. ISBN 978-3-570-58024-0.
• Higgins, Hannah (2002). Fluxus Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22866-9.
• Stockhausen, Karlheinz (1963). Dieter Schnebel (ed.). Texte zur Musik. 2. Cologne: M. DuMont Schauberg.
• Stockhausen-Stiftung (2013). "Karlheinz Stockhausen, August 22nd 1928 – December 5th 2007: Biography". karlheinzstockhausen.org. Retrieved 8 December 2013.

External links[]

• Official website
• Artnet biography
• Galerie Schüppenhauer, Cologne at the Wayback Machine (archived 30 June 2006)
• AskART.com: Mary Hilde Bauermeister
• psst pp Piano – Hommage á Mary Bauermeister Cartoon movie of 10 minutes, by Gregor Zootzky, about the studio of Mary Bauermeister, at the Lintgasse 28 in Cologne, 1960/62, with John Cage, Nam June Paik, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Ben Patterson, Hans G Helms, Mary Bauermeister and others^{[dead link]}