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Klee, Paul
born: 1897 München,buchsee, near Berne, Switzerland
died: 194o Muralto, Locarno, Switzerland
In 1911, the year Paul Klee drew Head of a Woman, he met Wassily Kandinsky,
Franz Marc, and August Macke in Munich. The following year Klee took part
in their exhibition, The Blue Rider. This pen and ink drawing marks the
end of Klee's early phase, yet it also anticipates some of the graphic
devices and inventions that would soon bring him fame. The simplified contour,
which captures the essence of the model and whose harshness is softened
by delicate washes, depicts not only what the artist's eye sees but also
what it makes him feel. Indeed the whole of Klee's work was based on his
credo, "Art does not reproduce the visible, it makes visible." Key events
in his career were a confrontation with Cubism and with Robert Delaunay's
Orphism (1914, in Paris), as well as an experience of the Mediterranean
region (on his Tunis journey of 1914). Klee's art was equally based in
the study of nature and the study of art itself. The light-flooded composition
Highroad and Byroads is one of a series of works done in 1928 and 1929
under the impression of a trip to Egypt. The rigorous structure of horizontal
strips and rectangular fields reflects the approach of Klee's Bauhaus period
(1920-1931). The linear scaffolding, also present in many other works of
the late 192os, follows the rationa) principles of design which the artist
had worked out for purposes of instruction at the school. His experience
of the brilliant Egyptian sunlight, the expansiveness of its countryside,
and the traces of its ancient culture, are all translated into compellingly
simple form and clear color. The horizontal strips and lines evoke fields
and terraces; the unbroken blue and violet bands at the top convey an impression
of a horizon and distant sky, but might also be read as the Nile. By shortening
the colored bands towards the top, Klee suggests a landscape receding in
space without, however, going so far as to create a perspective illusion
that would destroy the flatness of the picture plane. The light color harmonies
wonderfully suggest desert sand and soil, water and vegetation, without
being at all realistic. Beyond the impression it gives of the Egyptian
landscape and atmosphere, the picture would also seem to contain a metaphorical,
universal reference to streets and roads, symbols of the hierarchical order
of social life, but also of its secrets and vicissitudes, its errors and
confusions. In the watercolor Tone from Sicily- an island Klee visited
in 1924 - details are indicated by means of what he called "squaring."
The mountains are covered with groups of short brushmarks of a kind that
would reappear in the Divisionist paintings of the 193os. Underscored by
the title, the forms and colors of the painting evoke a mental picture
- or conjure up a memory - of gleaming, sun-warmed villages overhanging
Mediterranean bays, under a perpetually blue sky. The mosaic-like interior
structure and the strips of silver foil at top and bottom lend the composition
a touch of preciousness, and bring reminiscences of the art of the past
in this region to mind. Klee's Fool in Trance (1929) belongs to a long
series ofworks on the subject of theater, circus, and variety shows. The
figure, built up principally of linear arabesques, appears against an indeterminate
background of light browns and greys. It seems translucent and almost weightless,
evoking the state of trance. This intention is underscored by emphasis
on the gesture of the hands, open as if in supplication, and the facial
features of overlarge eye and open mouth, which suggest the appearance
to the figure of a dream or vision. Expelled by the National Socialists
from his teaching post at the DüsseldorfAcademy in 1933, Klee emigrated
to Berne, Switzerland. It was here that he did his late work, whose subject-matter
was often ambiguous or gently ironic, as in the tempera and watercolor
Über-Blick (Over-View, or Super-Gaze). Continuing to explore the borderline
zone between objective reference and abstraction, Klee evoked an ambivalent
relationship between nature and its creatures. Here the image oscillates
between a mountainous landscape and a face, whose Super-Gaze seems to fix
us impassively but threateningly.
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