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Lot Essay
Klee left Germany in late 1933, soon after Hitler's ascendancy to power. He settled in Bern, where he had lived during his youth, although he did not have Swiss citizenship and would not succeed in obtaining it. Events of the day notwithstanding, Klee produced an enormous body of work during the final years of his life, all the more astonishing because he was also contending with the symptoms of scleroderma, a terminal skin disease. The artist was initially bedridden, but he learned to cope with his condition and resumed work by sitting at a large drawing table instead of standing at an easel. He produced only 25 works in 1936, but this number rose to 264 in 1937, 489 in 1938, and over 1,200 in 1939. Klee wrote to his son Felix: "Productivity is increasing in range and at a highly accelerated tempo; I can no longer entirely keep up with these children of mine. They run away with me. There is a certain adaptation taking place, in that drawings predominate. Twelve hundred items in 1939 is really something of a record performance" (quoted in F. Klee, Paul Klee, His Life and Work in Documents, New York, 1962, p. 72).
Spielendes Kind displays the succinct graphic elements that constitute the signature formal vocabulary of Klee's late style. The child's playful pose balanced on a mauve-colored ball is composed from the most basic signs that one can devise for the human figure. Miró had been a dedicated maker of pictorial signs since the early 1920s; Matisse and Picasso would eventually take similar steps toward sign-making in their late oeuvre. In the present work, rudimentary graphic elements in pink, grayish teal and yellow structure the image of the child, cutting through and dividing the green and linen ground into zones. The composition demonstrates the extent to which his work had moved towards an increasingly abstract, universalized and minimalist means of expression. Matthias Bärmann has observed, "His reduced, sign-like repertoire gave Klee, who was aware of how little time remained to him, a spontaneous outlet for his enormous creative urge" (Paul Klee, Fulfillment in the Late Work, Hanover, 2003, p. 15).
The political news coming from Germany was unrelentingly discouraging and revealed a growing wave of sinister intent and actual persecution that reached into all corners of society. The ostracism of undesirable artists was well underway. Klee learned in 1937 that fifteen of his works had been included in the infamous exhibition of Entartete Kunst, and more than a hundred others were being removed from German museums in an all-out purge of modern artists. Despite the events of the day, and the crisis he faced in his health, Klee continued his daily routine and worked as hard as ever. Felix Klee, as he pondered his father's prolific production during this period, later wrote: "The last three years of his life must be compared to the eruption of a volcano" (op. cit., p. 73). The Paris dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who by way of a contract with the artist in 1933 became Klee's exclusive agent for sales, declared, "this late production added a note of grandeur, not hitherto discernable, to Klee's work. Thus the hero triumphs over evil" (Klee, New York, 1950, p. 14).
Spielendes Kind displays the succinct graphic elements that constitute the signature formal vocabulary of Klee's late style. The child's playful pose balanced on a mauve-colored ball is composed from the most basic signs that one can devise for the human figure. Miró had been a dedicated maker of pictorial signs since the early 1920s; Matisse and Picasso would eventually take similar steps toward sign-making in their late oeuvre. In the present work, rudimentary graphic elements in pink, grayish teal and yellow structure the image of the child, cutting through and dividing the green and linen ground into zones. The composition demonstrates the extent to which his work had moved towards an increasingly abstract, universalized and minimalist means of expression. Matthias Bärmann has observed, "His reduced, sign-like repertoire gave Klee, who was aware of how little time remained to him, a spontaneous outlet for his enormous creative urge" (Paul Klee, Fulfillment in the Late Work, Hanover, 2003, p. 15).
The political news coming from Germany was unrelentingly discouraging and revealed a growing wave of sinister intent and actual persecution that reached into all corners of society. The ostracism of undesirable artists was well underway. Klee learned in 1937 that fifteen of his works had been included in the infamous exhibition of Entartete Kunst, and more than a hundred others were being removed from German museums in an all-out purge of modern artists. Despite the events of the day, and the crisis he faced in his health, Klee continued his daily routine and worked as hard as ever. Felix Klee, as he pondered his father's prolific production during this period, later wrote: "The last three years of his life must be compared to the eruption of a volcano" (op. cit., p. 73). The Paris dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who by way of a contract with the artist in 1933 became Klee's exclusive agent for sales, declared, "this late production added a note of grandeur, not hitherto discernable, to Klee's work. Thus the hero triumphs over evil" (Klee, New York, 1950, p. 14).