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Lot Essay
Painted in 1922, Schicksalstunde um dreiviertel zwölf emerged at a crucial point in Paul Klee’s career. Less than a year prior to its creation, the artist had been invited by Walter Gropius to join the faculty at his progressive artistic school, the Bauhaus, in Weimar, offering the artist the position of Master of Form in the book-binding workshop. Klee quickly immersed himself in life at the school, and was swiftly appointed to further roles in the glass-painting studio and on the school’s revolutionary foundation course. The artist spent the opening years of his tenure at the Bauhaus diligently developing his teaching methods, consolidating his own personal experiences as an artist and clarifying the techniques he had previously adopted instinctively, in order to define and communicate the methodological and theoretical foundations of his art to his students.
Schicksalstunde um dreiviertel zwölf is one of a series of mysterious, whimsical compositions that Klee produced during the early years in Weimar, conjuring delicate line drawings of townscapes, plant forms, and mountainous landscapes against richly modulated color fields. While these playful poetic fantasies often drew inspiration from the world of theater, ballet, opera, music and fairy tales, Klee’s narratives remained distinctly elusive, their dramatic play of action existing within a dream-like atmosphere. In the present work, the title focuses our attention on the countdown of the clock on the right, which reads 11:45, its pendulum marking the minutes until midnight. The conical shape with two balls in the upper zone of the painting repeats the swinging motion of the pendulum, while the moon to its right echoes the shape of the glowing clock face, suggesting a parallel between cosmic and earthly time. At the bottom left of the scene, a girl rushes away, past a house that seems to be on the brink of toppling over, while above the characters “3/4 !” appear in bold lettering in the sky, the exclamation mark imbuing the scene with a sense of shock and urgency. Indeed, each element within the composition appears to emphasize the march of time, reminding the young woman of the portentous hour, hurrying her along on her journey.
In the large mountain in the center of the composition, the vegetation and trees that line the slopes are grouped together in distinctive bands, their forms recalling the bars of a musical score. Music was an integral part of Klee's life from his earliest childhood—his father was a music teacher, his mother a trained singer, and he himself an accomplished violinist. Many of his lectures at the Bauhaus centered on the parallels between music and color theory, and he persistently sought to translate the temporal qualities of music into visual form through his paintings. Here, the allusions to music lend an additional theatrical dimension to the composition, conjuring a sense of the soundscape that forms a backdrop to the action—one can almost imagine the toll of the bell in the clock tower as it rings through the landscape, a warning that time is running out.
Schicksalstunde um dreiviertel zwölf featured in several important exhibitions of Klee’s work through the 1920s, before being acquired by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, then the sole agent for Klee’s work in Europe. In 1938, Kahnweiler granted the dealer Karl Nierendorf, who had recently emigrated to New York from Berlin, exclusive rights to represent the artist in America. Writing in April of that year to the collector Duncan Phillips, Nierendorf explained the deal he had struck with the artist: “I made a contract with Klee such as no art dealer in the world would do. Regardless of what sale I might make, I guaranteed Klee an amount each year upon which he could live well and work without care for his material welfare” (quoted in C. Lanchner, “Klee in America,” in Paul Klee, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1987, p. 101). The present canvas passed from Kahnweiler to Neirendorf around this time, and shortly thereafter was acquired by Phillips, who had begun collecting the artist’s work early in the decade, and had redoubled his efforts as the 1930s drew to a close. The painting was also featured in a lavishly illustrated monograph on Klee that Nierendorf published in English in 1941, which marked an important step in establishing Klee’s reputation in America.
Schicksalstunde um dreiviertel zwölf is one of a series of mysterious, whimsical compositions that Klee produced during the early years in Weimar, conjuring delicate line drawings of townscapes, plant forms, and mountainous landscapes against richly modulated color fields. While these playful poetic fantasies often drew inspiration from the world of theater, ballet, opera, music and fairy tales, Klee’s narratives remained distinctly elusive, their dramatic play of action existing within a dream-like atmosphere. In the present work, the title focuses our attention on the countdown of the clock on the right, which reads 11:45, its pendulum marking the minutes until midnight. The conical shape with two balls in the upper zone of the painting repeats the swinging motion of the pendulum, while the moon to its right echoes the shape of the glowing clock face, suggesting a parallel between cosmic and earthly time. At the bottom left of the scene, a girl rushes away, past a house that seems to be on the brink of toppling over, while above the characters “3/4 !” appear in bold lettering in the sky, the exclamation mark imbuing the scene with a sense of shock and urgency. Indeed, each element within the composition appears to emphasize the march of time, reminding the young woman of the portentous hour, hurrying her along on her journey.
In the large mountain in the center of the composition, the vegetation and trees that line the slopes are grouped together in distinctive bands, their forms recalling the bars of a musical score. Music was an integral part of Klee's life from his earliest childhood—his father was a music teacher, his mother a trained singer, and he himself an accomplished violinist. Many of his lectures at the Bauhaus centered on the parallels between music and color theory, and he persistently sought to translate the temporal qualities of music into visual form through his paintings. Here, the allusions to music lend an additional theatrical dimension to the composition, conjuring a sense of the soundscape that forms a backdrop to the action—one can almost imagine the toll of the bell in the clock tower as it rings through the landscape, a warning that time is running out.
Schicksalstunde um dreiviertel zwölf featured in several important exhibitions of Klee’s work through the 1920s, before being acquired by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, then the sole agent for Klee’s work in Europe. In 1938, Kahnweiler granted the dealer Karl Nierendorf, who had recently emigrated to New York from Berlin, exclusive rights to represent the artist in America. Writing in April of that year to the collector Duncan Phillips, Nierendorf explained the deal he had struck with the artist: “I made a contract with Klee such as no art dealer in the world would do. Regardless of what sale I might make, I guaranteed Klee an amount each year upon which he could live well and work without care for his material welfare” (quoted in C. Lanchner, “Klee in America,” in Paul Klee, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1987, p. 101). The present canvas passed from Kahnweiler to Neirendorf around this time, and shortly thereafter was acquired by Phillips, who had begun collecting the artist’s work early in the decade, and had redoubled his efforts as the 1930s drew to a close. The painting was also featured in a lavishly illustrated monograph on Klee that Nierendorf published in English in 1941, which marked an important step in establishing Klee’s reputation in America.