Karl Baumann (1911-1984) American, Watercolor. Original abstract image of San Francisco. Signed and dated 1941 lower right. 

Overall: 13 3/4 X 16 3/4 in. 

Sight: 8 1/4 X 11 1/2 in. 

#2789 . 

Karl Herman Baumann was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1911. His father traveled to America while he was still young to find work, and he spent much time with his maternal grandparents, who first encouraged him to develop his interests in art and nature. He began drawing at the age of 5, with no formal training. At the age of 18 he emigrated to the United States and settled in San Francisco, California. There he worked as a commercial artist at Schmidt Lithograph alongside his father for nearly a decade. In 1939 Baumann began working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as an easel painter. In this new and stimulating environment surrounded by other painters he was exposed to new techniques and ideas, and began to develop his own style, experimenting with Abstraction and Expressionism. During this time he painted mostly in watercolor, using bold washes of color paired with outlined images and limited detail. He became known primarily as a landscapist, also creating seascapes and still lifes. That same year he exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exhibition and continued to show his work locally and nationally at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Dayton Art Institute, Ohio. Between 1947 and 1952, he taught as a professor of painting at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California. In 1976 Baumann was diagnosed with lung cancer but made a complete recovery from it two years later, later dying of a heart attack in San Francisco in 1984.