Lot Essay
This work is mentioned in the artist's own oeuvre catalogue as "1940, 47 (X7), mehrfarbiges Blatt, öl und wachsfarben, Briefpap"
Sold with a photo-certificate from Josef Helfenstein of the Paul Klee Stiftung dated Berne, April 5 1993
Following the National Socialist's rise to power in January 1933, Klee's position at the Düsseldorf Academy became increasingly tenuous, and he was finally dismissed at the end of the year.
"The question of where to settle down for this new phase of my life answered itself", as Klee himself wrote in January 1940. "I never really lost touch with my home town; now I was strongly attracted to it again. I have been a resident here (in Bern) ever since. My one remaining wish is to become a citizen as well." (W. Grohmann, Paul Klee, London, 1954, p. 15). Klee led a relatively quiet life there, suffering as he was from a degenerative skin disease called Sclerodermia. However, he never really stopped working. In fact, his output actually increased dramatically and he was working on larger scale painting, evolving a means of expression of the utmost boldness and simplicity.
Because Klee kept a meticulous record of his output, it is know that he executed a total of 398 works in a four month period in 1940. (Paul Klee Stiftung, Paul Klee, Verzeichnis der Werke des Jahres 1940, Stuttgart, 1991, p. 7). Klee's son, Felix, described, "all of a sudden, during the last three and a half years of my father's life, between 1937 and 1940, he created an amazingly large number of works in a completely new style. More than 1,200 in the single year of 1939! Lines turned into bars, and his colours became strong and vibrant, unknown elements of his art until then. This late work is the least accessible, but in my opinion it is his most important." (S. Rewald, Paul Klee, New York, 1988, p. 52).
"His desire for directness, which was the outcome of a last detour around the tangible aspects of the natural and the spiritual world, led him to use very simple shapes. Open bar-like strokes are reduced to a supplementary function or the colours lead an independent life of their own within a sparse framework. Klee now returns to gouache which he had already used before on occasions. He employs it as a thick impasto or thinned out, and likes to combine it with oil, tempera and watercolours, so that it is not easy to see just how the surfaces obtained in this way were produced." (Grohmann, op. cit., p. 325).
"The late work of Paul Klee, besides its enormous psychic interest, was of high importance for the future development of modern art. His disjunktive method of composition, his abnegation of the necessity to focus on a point or an episode of a painting, represent one of the very few new inventions in painting since Cubism." (Exhibition Catalogue, D. Hall (intro.), Paul Klee: The Last Years, Edinburgh, 16 Aug.-16 Sept. 1974; Bristol, 10 Oct.-23 Nov. 1074 and London, 13 Dec. 1974-12 Jan. 1975, p. 4).
Among the last works are, "his signs for angels, those familiar presences Klee had felt always beside him, knowledge of whom he shared with Rilke, whose verses so often confirm Klee's belief that 'art does not reproduce the visible, but makes visible'." (G. H. Hamilton, Painting and Sculpture in Europe 1880-1940, Hamondsworth, Middlesex, 1983, p. 499)
Sold with a photo-certificate from Josef Helfenstein of the Paul Klee Stiftung dated Berne, April 5 1993
Following the National Socialist's rise to power in January 1933, Klee's position at the Düsseldorf Academy became increasingly tenuous, and he was finally dismissed at the end of the year.
"The question of where to settle down for this new phase of my life answered itself", as Klee himself wrote in January 1940. "I never really lost touch with my home town; now I was strongly attracted to it again. I have been a resident here (in Bern) ever since. My one remaining wish is to become a citizen as well." (W. Grohmann, Paul Klee, London, 1954, p. 15). Klee led a relatively quiet life there, suffering as he was from a degenerative skin disease called Sclerodermia. However, he never really stopped working. In fact, his output actually increased dramatically and he was working on larger scale painting, evolving a means of expression of the utmost boldness and simplicity.
Because Klee kept a meticulous record of his output, it is know that he executed a total of 398 works in a four month period in 1940. (Paul Klee Stiftung, Paul Klee, Verzeichnis der Werke des Jahres 1940, Stuttgart, 1991, p. 7). Klee's son, Felix, described, "all of a sudden, during the last three and a half years of my father's life, between 1937 and 1940, he created an amazingly large number of works in a completely new style. More than 1,200 in the single year of 1939! Lines turned into bars, and his colours became strong and vibrant, unknown elements of his art until then. This late work is the least accessible, but in my opinion it is his most important." (S. Rewald, Paul Klee, New York, 1988, p. 52).
"His desire for directness, which was the outcome of a last detour around the tangible aspects of the natural and the spiritual world, led him to use very simple shapes. Open bar-like strokes are reduced to a supplementary function or the colours lead an independent life of their own within a sparse framework. Klee now returns to gouache which he had already used before on occasions. He employs it as a thick impasto or thinned out, and likes to combine it with oil, tempera and watercolours, so that it is not easy to see just how the surfaces obtained in this way were produced." (Grohmann, op. cit., p. 325).
"The late work of Paul Klee, besides its enormous psychic interest, was of high importance for the future development of modern art. His disjunktive method of composition, his abnegation of the necessity to focus on a point or an episode of a painting, represent one of the very few new inventions in painting since Cubism." (Exhibition Catalogue, D. Hall (intro.), Paul Klee: The Last Years, Edinburgh, 16 Aug.-16 Sept. 1974; Bristol, 10 Oct.-23 Nov. 1074 and London, 13 Dec. 1974-12 Jan. 1975, p. 4).
Among the last works are, "his signs for angels, those familiar presences Klee had felt always beside him, knowledge of whom he shared with Rilke, whose verses so often confirm Klee's belief that 'art does not reproduce the visible, but makes visible'." (G. H. Hamilton, Painting and Sculpture in Europe 1880-1940, Hamondsworth, Middlesex, 1983, p. 499)