This greeting to Jo Baumann from Sigmar Polke and Britta Zöllner was written underneath a newspaper clipping of an advertisement for the New Zealand bread brand Vogel’s. Polke most likely discovered this advert on a trip he took with his partner Britta to Southeast Asia, Australia, and Papua New Guinea in 1980–81. The grainy image and its sliced bread motif are reminiscent of Polke’s early raster paintings from the 1960s, which depict advertisements for consumer goods from the Wirtschaftswunder (“economic miracle”) period, such as Frau mit Butterbrot (Woman with Buttered Bread; 1964). What probably caught Sigmar Polke’s eye here, however, was the brand name “Vogel’s,” which made him think of another Vogel: Carl Vogel, the president of the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HFBK) in Hamburg, where Sigmar Polke taught as a professor in 1970/71 and from 1977 to 1989. The president was often the target of puns and jokes because his name also means “bird” in German. Jo Bauman worked at the HFBK from 1977 to 2003, first as Carl Vogel’s secretary, then in the examination office and in charge of scholarships. She fulfilled this role in a truly special way and was an important point of contact and confidante—not just for Sigmar Polke, but also for many other teachers and students.
Polke Post 23 - „Hey Jo, what's with the butter on the bread?”– a donation by Jo Baumann for our archive
POLKE POST 23
„Hey Jo, what's with the butter on the bread?”
Jo Baumann (*May 17, 1938) died on May 15, 2023 and this newspaper clipping made its way into the archive of the Anna Polke Foundation as part of a larger bundle of documents. We would like to thank Jo Baumann and her daughter Kate Rageth for this donation, which consists of letters, notes, and records relating to Polke’s teaching activities at the HFBK as well as exhibitions and prizes. These not only document their collaboration, but also their long-standing friendship, which continued after the end of Polke’s teaching career.
Petra Lange-Berndt, a member of our Board of Trustees, remembers working with Jo Baumann in the context of the three-part exhibition project Wir Kleinbürger! Zeitgenossen und Zeitgenossinnen (We Petty Bourgeois! Comrades and Contemporaries) at the Hamburger Kunsthalle from 2009 to 2010:
“We have Jo Baumann to thank for everything! For many years, she was a key figure for both teachers and students at the HFBK in Hamburg, where she worked as a secretary. This job title refers to an administrative position with a focus on communication, but these dry words do not do any justice to Jo’s role or to who she was as a person. She was at the center of a web of relationships that only existed in the first place because of her, and also acted as a close confidante for many artists, especially Sigmar Polke, both during his professorship and beyond.
After her time at the art academy, Jo moved to the Hamburger Kunsthalle, where she worked as the office manager for the director, Hubertus Gassner. Without her, we—Dorothee Böhm, Michael Liebelt, Dietmar Rübel, and I—would never have been able to realize our exhibition project on Sigmar Polke. Because it was only through, with, and because of Jo that we managed to even get in touch with Sigmar at all: it was her, not Gassner, that we first convinced of our plan to research and exhibit Sigmar’s art and community in the 1970s. And Jo went on to put in more than one good word for us. This is how we all finally managed to get together in Sigmar’s studio on Weyerstraßerweg in Cologne in 2008; Jo was there, too, and acted as an intermediary. She also filled our train ride from Hamburg with endless stories about art and artists – this energy never ceased, not even on the return journey.
In addition to this, in the very first chapter of our exhibition, titled Clique, we were able to display numerous archival documents and works of art from Jo Baumann’s possession. These items were presented in two table display cases in the same room as Sigmar Polke’s thirty-meter-long photo frieze Hamburg Lerchenfeld (1975–1976). With this homage to the art academy in Hamburg, we were thus able to thank Jo for her invaluable help during the exhibition itself. When the book Sigmar Polke: Wir Kleinbürger! Die 1970er Jahre (Sigmar Polke: We Petty Bourgeois! The 1970s) was published in spring 2009, we all boarded the train from Hamburg to Cologne together with Jo and once again chatted all the way to Weyerstraßerweg, where there was champagne waiting for everyone. Even during this small book launch party, nobody could resist Jo’s good mood and enthusiasm. We kept in touch afterwards and spent many pleasant evenings together: we will never forget Jo Baumann’s friendliness, support, knowledge, constructive criticism, and openness. We are all the more delighted that her estate is now being archived and made accessible by the Anna Polke Foundation.”
The archive of the Anna Polke Foundation includes press articles, ephemera, and documents such as correspondence, records, and photographs, as well as audio and video material such as radio broadcasts, interviews, and documentation of events from various sources.
The archive is currently being gradually indexed and is available to researchers. We are grateful to the LVR-Archivberatungs- und Fortbildungszentrum (LVR Archive Advice and Training Center) for their archive funding and would also like to thank the Landesinitiative Substanzerhalt (LISE; State Initiative for Material Preservation) for their advice and financial support.