Untitled, 1947 Oil and sand on canvas 33 7/8 20 in. (86 50.8 cm) Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, 114
Promenade, 1950 Oil on canvas 40 30 in. (101.6 76.2 cm) Collection of George Wein; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, 115
Untitled, 1956 Oil and ink on paper 26 40 in. (66.0 101.6 cm) Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, 116
Untitled, 1953 Oil and ink on paper 25 7/8 40 in. (65.7 101.6 cm) The Kemp Family Collection 117
Carnavale, 1958 Ink on paper 18 24 in. (45.7 61 cm) Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, 118
Carnaval Totem, 1959 Crayon, pastel, and ink on paper 24 17 3/4 in. (61 45.1 cm) Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, 119
Frolic, c.1958 Oil and ink on paper 17 3/4 24 in. (45.1 61 cm) Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, 120
Promenade, 1961 Oil on canvas 50 64 1/4 in. (127 163.2 cm) Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, 121
Fig. 95 Fig. 96 Fig. 95 Paul Klee, Fitzli Putzli, Wodan and Mohamed, in History School Book, 1891, ink on paper (loose sheet), 8 1/16 5 5/16 in. (20.4 13.5 cm). Private collection, Switzerland; on extended loan to Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern Fig. 96 Atelier of Paul Klee, Bauhaus Weimar, 1926. Photograph by Felix Klee. Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern; Klee Family Donation 122
Paul Klee: Archaic Signs and Symbols Having completed his studies in art in Munich, Paul Klee undertook an educational journey through Italy during the winter of 1901 / 2. The trip, however, turned out to be an artistic disappointment, as Klee became aware that ancient and Renaissance art were not compatible with his artistic goals. He was, moreover, coming to the realization that the art he had encountered as exemplary during his studies in Munich between 1898 and 1901, was only a restating of older forms and subject matter. Klee concluded that he was living in an epigonic era 1 lacking creativity and that the realm of the ideal is outdated in the visual arts for the contemporary artist.2 He would be obliged to return to the primal source before he would be able to create something new: I want to be as thou newborn, knowing nothing absolutely about Europe; ignoring poets and fashions, to be almost primitive. 3 In the search for essence, he studied prehistoric art, the art of indigenous peoples, and children s drawings. In them he discovered a simple pictorial language comprising universal signs and symbols, which he borrowed for his own compositions. The artist made no statements about specific people or tribes, but the library of his estate, which is in the archive of the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, contains several books and magazines that had supplied him inspiration while he invented his own archetypal symbols. Drawings in the margins of Klee s schoolbooks are evidence of the artist s interest, from a young age, in figures from indigenous art (fig. 95); the ethnographic collection in the Bernisches Historisches Museum (Historical Museum in Bern) perhaps motivated him further. Klee s wife, Lily, gave him the first edition of Carl Einstein s pioneering book Negerplastik (Negro sculpture) published in 1915, which Einstein had dedicated to Klee; when Einstein s Afrikanische Plastik (African sculpture) was published in 1921, the author personally gave Klee a copy. Klee incorporated some of Einstein s central ideas into his teaching at the Bauhaus and subsequently at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art.4 Other publications on African art, by Leo Frobenius and Ernst Fuhrmann, and Asian art can be found in the library of Klee s estate. Magazines such as Cahiers d Art and Omnibus could also have served as sources. On Klee s travels to Tunisia (1914) and Egypt (1928), he studied Arabic writing and hieroglyphs, which he freely transcribed in his own work, as in, for instance, the painting Intention, 1938.126 (pl. p. 129). As a photograph from his Bauhaus studio shows, Klee kept a collection of African spears (fig. 96). Unlike many of his contemporaries, Klee did not simply integrate artifacts he had seen in ethnological museums or publications into his work but rather, adopted selected aspects during his working process,5 above all, the forms that held universal meaning through their simplification and schematization and therefore remain open to interpretation. Klee similarly recognized children s artwork as an exemplar of reduction to the universally elemental. Even if Klee, in 1911, afforded some of his own childhood drawings artistic prestige by including them in his handwritten catalog of his oeuvre, listing his works of art to date, he warned against comparing his work with children s drawings because, he pointed out, he consciously employed a simplification of forms, which lent his works an impression of primitivism. 6 In addition to simplified, schematized forms and symbols, Klee was fascinated by the primacy of the line in the works of children and indigenous peoples, as he believed line was a primal expression of movement and therefore, in his view, the first prerequisite in artistic creation (see She bellows, We Play, 1928.70, pl. p. 124). 123
She Bellows, We Play, 1928.70 Oil on canvas; original frame 17 1/8 22 1/4 in. (43.5 56.5 cm) Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern Paul Klee 124
Animal Catching a Scent, 1930.64 Pen and watercolor on paper on cardboard 12 9/16 18 13/16 in. (31.9 47.8 cm) Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern Paul Klee 125
UNVERKÄUFLICHE LESEPROBE Zentrum Paul Klee Bern, The Phillips Collection Ten Americans engl. After Paul Klee Gebundenes Buch, Pappband, 240 Seiten, 23,0 x 32,0 cm 209 farbige Abbildungen ISBN: 978-3-7913-5665-5 Prestel Erscheinungstermin: September 2017 Critics have traditionally confined Paul Klee s contribution to American art as one of spirit, and limited to the works of the School and other Abstract Expressionist painters. In fact, Klee s influence on American art is more expansive, as illustrated in this study of ten artists who, through their use of automatic drawing, color field painting, symbols, and pictographs, reveal how Klee s theories and artistic methods contributed to the history of post-war American art. The ten artists explored include familiar names, such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Mark Tobey, Gene Davis, and Kenneth Noland, as well as lesser-known artists William Baziotes,, Theodore Stamos, and Bradley Walker Tomlin. The richly-illustrated book features essays exploring Klee s legacy among various schools of American art and a chronology illustrates where and how American artists learned about Klee. It also includes a profile of each artist and their connections to Klee, followed by exquisite reproductions of their works.