Paul Klee

Curt Valentin (Buchholz Gallery), Berlin & New York
Otto Ralfs, Germany
William & Julie Landmann, Toronto (by 1942)
Dominion Gallery, Montreal
Private Collection, Montreal
Acquired from the above circa 1995

Paul Klee Stiftung, ed., Paul Klee Catalogue raisonné 1927-1930, vol. V, Bern, 2001, no. 4389, illustrated p. 120

Executed on black wove paper laid down on a card. Artist's pinholes at four corners. A minor surface scratch extends from the top right corner down to the figure's face, visible only in glaring light and with no associated losses. Under UV light: no inpainting is apparent. Colors are extremely bright and fresh. Work is in very good condition.
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Executed during the height of the artist's involvement with Walter Gropius' Bauhaus, this work accentuates the unique iconography that personifies Klee's strongest pieces. The bright palette and richly-textured surface of Figurine exemplify the artist's unmatched ability with works on paper while the composition represents his unique ability to approach the boundaries of figural abstraction. The bold blocks of color in this work typify his unparalleled success as a colorist and his boundless imagination pervades the vivacious composition. Andrew Kagan writes, "Klee's greatness as a colorist and his gifts as a draftsman embrace a truly extraordinary range and diversity. His seemingly tireless experimentation and his astounding inventiveness are among his distinctive characteristics... It must be understood that [Klee's] ultimate ambitions embraced the concept of an art that would resolve all apparent contradiction, an art that would reconcile all dualities and oppositions -- in other words, an art of ultimate synthesis. 'Truth,' he declared, 'demands that all elements be present at once" (Andrew Kagan, "Klee's Development," Paul Klee at the Guggenheim Museum (exhibition catalogue), New York, 1993, p. 26).

Curt Valentin was one of the most prominent art dealers working in Germany in the early decades of the 20th Century. By 1934, Valentin moved from Berlin to Hamburg and joined Karl Buchholz's gallery. The two dealers used a book shop to conceal the back rooms in which they acquired and sold Modern art which had been classified by Hitler as "degenerate." By 1937, Valentin relocated to New York and opened a successful gallery for the sale of German art. The fact that Figurine was one of the works which passed through Valentin's hands is a testament to its uncanny modernity.

 

Fig. 1 The artist in his studio, Weimar Bauhaus, 1925 Photograph by Felix Klee