Lot Essay
This work is recorded in the Artist's own oeuvre catalogue as "1933, 399 (E19) mehrfarbiges Blatt, sieht hell. Kleisterfarben (Messer) Documenten Kanzlei pap."
Sold with a photo-certificate from Josef Helfenstein of the Paul Klee Stiftung dated Berne, April 5 1993
In the spring of 1931 Klee resigned his position at the Bauhaus in Dessau because he was dissatisfied with their increasingly political activities there. Thereafter, Klee took a teaching position on a part-time basis at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts. There he expounded his own ideas about art and participated in the artistic activities of the town.
"There may not be as many geniuses in Düsseldorf as in Dessau, but one feels at home in this art-laden atmosphere. Even the conservative element is prepared to come to terms with progressives, and so it is more honourable and therefore more interesting than the modernist element." (W. Grohmann, Paul Klee, London, 1954, p. 80).
Klee was settled and happy and divided his time between teaching and his own creative activity. Until the end of 1933 Klee and his family lived at Heinrichstrasse no. 36 on the outskirts of Düsseldorf. His son, Felix Klee, relates "...there in complete peace, working furiously, he created a large number of drawings and paintings." (S. Rewald, Paul Klee, The Berggruen Klee Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1988, p. 48).
Many of the pictures he made during this period show that the images as he portrays them begin to grow on the ground rather than being superimposed, thus a complete fusion of void and solid has occurred. "In these, the coloured fields may be delimited by thick or thin line. But the most interesting study of the late period is the behaviour of line, considered not as edge or contour but as the source of structure and, at the same time, seen as sign. The lines of Klee in the mid-thirties becomes mainly disjunctive. Notable exceptions are the convolute, disturbing forms are drawn with an insistently continuous line that doubles back on itself."
Some lines are used discontinuously, in others Klee is "exploring the use of line not to delineate boundaries or trace lines of force but to be in its own right both object and sign...By varying the quality of his lines, at the service of an astounding imagination, Klee was able to evoke not only the 'subject' he desired but the manner in which the subject was to affect the viewer." (Exhibition Catalogue, D. Hall (intro), Paul Klee: The Last Years, Edinburgh, 16 Aug.-16 Sept. 1974; Bristol, 10 Oct.-23 Nov. 1974 and London, 13 Dec. 1974-12 Jan. 1975, p. 4).
Sold with a photo-certificate from Josef Helfenstein of the Paul Klee Stiftung dated Berne, April 5 1993
In the spring of 1931 Klee resigned his position at the Bauhaus in Dessau because he was dissatisfied with their increasingly political activities there. Thereafter, Klee took a teaching position on a part-time basis at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts. There he expounded his own ideas about art and participated in the artistic activities of the town.
"There may not be as many geniuses in Düsseldorf as in Dessau, but one feels at home in this art-laden atmosphere. Even the conservative element is prepared to come to terms with progressives, and so it is more honourable and therefore more interesting than the modernist element." (W. Grohmann, Paul Klee, London, 1954, p. 80).
Klee was settled and happy and divided his time between teaching and his own creative activity. Until the end of 1933 Klee and his family lived at Heinrichstrasse no. 36 on the outskirts of Düsseldorf. His son, Felix Klee, relates "...there in complete peace, working furiously, he created a large number of drawings and paintings." (S. Rewald, Paul Klee, The Berggruen Klee Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1988, p. 48).
Many of the pictures he made during this period show that the images as he portrays them begin to grow on the ground rather than being superimposed, thus a complete fusion of void and solid has occurred. "In these, the coloured fields may be delimited by thick or thin line. But the most interesting study of the late period is the behaviour of line, considered not as edge or contour but as the source of structure and, at the same time, seen as sign. The lines of Klee in the mid-thirties becomes mainly disjunctive. Notable exceptions are the convolute, disturbing forms are drawn with an insistently continuous line that doubles back on itself."
Some lines are used discontinuously, in others Klee is "exploring the use of line not to delineate boundaries or trace lines of force but to be in its own right both object and sign...By varying the quality of his lines, at the service of an astounding imagination, Klee was able to evoke not only the 'subject' he desired but the manner in which the subject was to affect the viewer." (Exhibition Catalogue, D. Hall (intro), Paul Klee: The Last Years, Edinburgh, 16 Aug.-16 Sept. 1974; Bristol, 10 Oct.-23 Nov. 1974 and London, 13 Dec. 1974-12 Jan. 1975, p. 4).