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Lot Essay
A photo-certificate from Dr. Jrgen Glaesmer of the Paul Klee-Stiftung dated Bern, November 21, 1980 accompanies this gouache, which will be included in the forthcoming volume III of their Paul Klee catalogue raisonn.
Klee was discharged from military service in February 1919 and in the Spring of that year he rented a large studio in the 18th Century Palais Suresnes in the Werneckstrasse in Schwabin, Munich's artists' quarter. The works executed during this period just before he joined the Bauhaus, show him focusing more on his materials: painting on linen, muslin and shirting, combining watercolor, tempera and ink - and for the first time painting seriously in oils.
Grohmann has commented on the works from 1919 as follows,
"Viewed superficially the pictures of 1919 are combinations of planes remotely reminiscent of analytical Cubism. Actually, however, they are based on a translucent network of straight lines which intersect at right or acute angles and produce a structure of planes. The "story", if it exists at all, is worked in and expands the facts by including fate in the composition. Klee's attitude is existentialist in that he repeatedly faces the void, re-creates the universe, and accepts fate. All the paintings of 1919 are stigmatized by fate, represented by houses, windows, trees and stars, rarely by animals or human beings. The associative elements that usually determine the title are not the point of departure; nor are the forms, or at least only those that leave room for association. Klee's whole universe is indeed embraced by form , but it is a form filled with the universe, and from this balance springs the fullness and precision of his pictures." (W. Grohmann, Paul Klee, London, 1954, pp.152 and 159).
Acquired in 1949 by the present owner, Vollmond in Mauern has not been seen in public for nearly 50 years.
Klee was discharged from military service in February 1919 and in the Spring of that year he rented a large studio in the 18th Century Palais Suresnes in the Werneckstrasse in Schwabin, Munich's artists' quarter. The works executed during this period just before he joined the Bauhaus, show him focusing more on his materials: painting on linen, muslin and shirting, combining watercolor, tempera and ink - and for the first time painting seriously in oils.
Grohmann has commented on the works from 1919 as follows,
"Viewed superficially the pictures of 1919 are combinations of planes remotely reminiscent of analytical Cubism. Actually, however, they are based on a translucent network of straight lines which intersect at right or acute angles and produce a structure of planes. The "story", if it exists at all, is worked in and expands the facts by including fate in the composition. Klee's attitude is existentialist in that he repeatedly faces the void, re-creates the universe, and accepts fate. All the paintings of 1919 are stigmatized by fate, represented by houses, windows, trees and stars, rarely by animals or human beings. The associative elements that usually determine the title are not the point of departure; nor are the forms, or at least only those that leave room for association. Klee's whole universe is indeed embraced by form , but it is a form filled with the universe, and from this balance springs the fullness and precision of his pictures." (W. Grohmann, Paul Klee, London, 1954, pp.152 and 159).
Acquired in 1949 by the present owner, Vollmond in Mauern has not been seen in public for nearly 50 years.