Lot Essay
A photo-certificate from the Paul Klee Stiftung, dated Bern, February 18, 1991 accompanies this work.
This work dates from the year that Klee gave his famous lecture at Jena and it may have been included in his exhibition there at the Kustverein. The title, Old Lovesong is typical for Klee's work of the 1920's:
Music runs through the whole of Klee's work, not merely in such
works with musical titles as Fugue in Red (1921) or Pastoral (1927). Obvious musical features of his pictures are their rising or falling rhythms, brief or broadly arching melodies, subdued, or cheerful keys, polyphonic or harmonic phrases, tonal and atonal counterpoint; we might even speak of fugues and sonatas, chamber music, solo pieces, and so on. (W. Grohmann, Paul Klee 1879-1940, New York, 1966, p. 15.)
The Grebe family, first owners of this work, were close friends of Klee who frequently visited with them in Weimar in the early 1920's for musical evenings. According to a member of the family the two figures in this work are the artist and his wife Lily, the latter identified by the letter L inverted.
This work dates from the year that Klee gave his famous lecture at Jena and it may have been included in his exhibition there at the Kustverein. The title, Old Lovesong is typical for Klee's work of the 1920's:
Music runs through the whole of Klee's work, not merely in such
works with musical titles as Fugue in Red (1921) or Pastoral (1927). Obvious musical features of his pictures are their rising or falling rhythms, brief or broadly arching melodies, subdued, or cheerful keys, polyphonic or harmonic phrases, tonal and atonal counterpoint; we might even speak of fugues and sonatas, chamber music, solo pieces, and so on. (W. Grohmann, Paul Klee 1879-1940, New York, 1966, p. 15.)
The Grebe family, first owners of this work, were close friends of Klee who frequently visited with them in Weimar in the early 1920's for musical evenings. According to a member of the family the two figures in this work are the artist and his wife Lily, the latter identified by the letter L inverted.