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Lot Essay
'Klee’s oil-transfers are perhaps the most instantly recognizable and visually characteristic of all his works. Many of the famous works by Klee – the ones to which legends attach – are oil transfers: the Angelus Novus (1920, 33) which belonged to Walter Benjamin, for example, and which illustrated his ‘angel of history’, flying backwards into the future; or Twittering Machine (1922, 151), which first taught Clement Greenberg, so he said, to ‘see’ abstract art.'
T. Trodd, ‘Drawing in the Archive: Paul Klee’s Oil Transfers’, in Oxford Art Journal, vol. 31, no. 1, 2001, p. 79.
The oil transfer drawing process, developed by Klee himself in 1919, saw the artist create his own variation of carbon copy paper by painting black oil paint over the entirety of a single sheet of paper. Once the paint was almost dry, this sheet was laid between a fresh sheet of paper and an existing drawing, which would then be traced through its surface with a sharp etching tool. The transcribed drawing would sometimes be left as is, and sometimes enriched with the additions of bold watercolour accents and washes.
The present work depicts the distillation of pears, in which a single fruit floats elegantly above a strange, whirring contraption. With all the depth and playfulness of Klee’s œuvre, the subject dances between future and past, the familiar and the unfamiliar, the mechanical and the alchemic. Amidst the fine gossamer-like threads of this spidery drawing, we are also able to see impressions of the artist’s hand, fingerprints and subtle variations of his touch. High orange and yellow tones accentuate the drawing, while cool greens and blues pool at its edges. Klee’s trademark inscription and hand-mounting process – his declaration that the work is complete – grounds the dancing composition on a hand-painted background of rich, deep red.
Klee’s captivating use of colour and variation in mark-making are testament to the sheer delight he took in the expressiveness and tactility of drawing, making Birnen-Destillation one of the finest examples of his oil transfer drawings.
T. Trodd, ‘Drawing in the Archive: Paul Klee’s Oil Transfers’, in Oxford Art Journal, vol. 31, no. 1, 2001, p. 79.
The oil transfer drawing process, developed by Klee himself in 1919, saw the artist create his own variation of carbon copy paper by painting black oil paint over the entirety of a single sheet of paper. Once the paint was almost dry, this sheet was laid between a fresh sheet of paper and an existing drawing, which would then be traced through its surface with a sharp etching tool. The transcribed drawing would sometimes be left as is, and sometimes enriched with the additions of bold watercolour accents and washes.
The present work depicts the distillation of pears, in which a single fruit floats elegantly above a strange, whirring contraption. With all the depth and playfulness of Klee’s œuvre, the subject dances between future and past, the familiar and the unfamiliar, the mechanical and the alchemic. Amidst the fine gossamer-like threads of this spidery drawing, we are also able to see impressions of the artist’s hand, fingerprints and subtle variations of his touch. High orange and yellow tones accentuate the drawing, while cool greens and blues pool at its edges. Klee’s trademark inscription and hand-mounting process – his declaration that the work is complete – grounds the dancing composition on a hand-painted background of rich, deep red.
Klee’s captivating use of colour and variation in mark-making are testament to the sheer delight he took in the expressiveness and tactility of drawing, making Birnen-Destillation one of the finest examples of his oil transfer drawings.