Mädchen mit Puppe

Details

Paul Klee (1879-1940)
Mädchen mit Puppe
signed 'Klee' (lower right) and dated, numbered and titled '1930. H.8. Mädchen mit Puppe' (lower center)
pen and ink over pencil on paper
18 3/8 x 12 in. (46.6 x 30.5 cm.)
Drawn in 1930

Provenance

Lily Klee, Bern.
Klee-Gesellschaft, Bern (1946).
Buchholz Gallery (Curt Valentin), New York (by 1949).
Frederick C. Schang, South Norwalk, New York (by 1952).
By descent from the above to the present owner.

Literature

W. Grohmann, Paul Klee, Handzeichnungen II 1921-1930, Berlin, 1934, p. 37, no. 90.
M. Armitage et al., Essays on Klee, New York, 1950 (illustrated).
F.C. Schang, Paul Klee, Collection of F.C. Schang, South Norwalk, 1952, no. 29.
G. Di San Lazzaro, Klee, A Study of His Life and Work, London, 1957, p. 295 (illustrated, p. 108).
M. Marnat, Klee, New York, 1974 (illustrated).
The Paul Klee Foundation, ed., Paul Klee, Catalogue raisonné, Bern, 2001, vol. 5, p. 520, no. 5367 (illustrated).

Exhibited

New York, Buchholz Gallery (Curt Valentin), Paul Klee, May 1950, no. 55.

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Lot Essay

During Klee's time as a teacher at the newly relocated Dessau Bauhaus from 1925-1931, he plunged into drawing with "barbaric fury" (W. Grohmann, Paul Klee, London, 1957, p. 273). Klee developed what Grohmann has called his "melodic line" (ibid., p. 266), a continuous, unbroken and flowing drawn line, that begins at one point and moves about the surface of the sheet guided only by the artist's impulse. It creates an entirely closed and unified image. Related to the automatic drawing of the Surrealists, the melodic line may be used to render specific imagery, as in Mädchen mit Puppe, or to create symbolic and abstract forms. The crossing of lines in loops and knots define component shapes in the image, and add a whimsical element to the present work.

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