The work "Homunkulus aufsteigend" is part of the work group "Faust und Phantom" which began in 1951 and lasted up until Willi Baumeister's death in 1955. In this work the artist used the composition of "Faust Schatten I" (1952, Beye/Baumeister 1923) and renders a variaton in portrait format. In doing so he leaves the observer a lot of freedom for associations, in order to discover the "unknown in art", as the title of his theoretic considerations on art from 1947 suggest. The light ground adds a merry character to the hovering figures. The black fantasy character, which Baumeister distilled from the amorphic dark forms from earlier works, ascends in the image's center