Wer tötet wen

Executed in 1931, Wer tötet wen dates from the height of Paul Klee’s career. Enjoying his well-earned standing as a leading international artist and major proponent of the Bauhaus – where he taught from 1920, in Weimar, and later Dessau – Klee succeeded in positioning himself as a pivotal figure of the modern art scene. In celebration of his fiftieth birthday in 1929 for example, visionary gallerist Alfred Flechtheim hosted a retrospective of his work which later famously travelled to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was also at this time in Paris that Cahiers d’Art approached him for a major volume featuring reproductions of his work. Indeed, as Klee’s name and genius spread, so did his unique vocabulary and visual approach.

Delighting in the poetic, expressive power of colour and form – which he mined with unparalleled force – his works from the 1930s range from the mathematical and virtually abstract to the figural and humorous. As Will Grohmann has aptly noted of this period, ‘Far removed from earthly reality as these works are, Klee occasionally relates them to man by the addition of associative elements… Entire human figures may emerge from the schematic pattern… Any discrepancy between the structural system and the associative elements only serves to make the relationship of the two more expressive… The precise, unadorned geometry of the shapes appears to contradict their human significance to such a degree that the effect of the whole is comic – a comedy based on form’ (Paul Klee, New York, 1954, p. 282).

Indeed, such was the success of Wer tötet wen, that Klee designated it as a ‘Sonderklasse’ – thus categorising it among his greatest works. Ever the meticulous intellectual, Klee developed a precise system for pricing his works, with eight price categories, crowned by the celebrated ‘Sonderklasse’: the assignation reserved only for the very best of his oeuvre, marked with the distinctive ‘S Cl’. Allocating this designation to the present lot, Klee affirms its place among those works intended to remain reserved to his personal collection – representing the highest quality and originality of his entire artistic output.