Paul Klee

Lily Klee, Bern (acquired in 1940)
Klee-Gesellschaft, Bern (acquired in 1946)
Curt Valentin (Buchholz Gallery), New York (acquired in 1950)
Gertrud A. Mellon (acquired from the above and sold by the estate: Sotheby’s, New York, November 3, 2005, lot  256)
Acquired at the above sale

New York, Buchholz Gallery, Sixty Unknown Drawings, 1951, no. 29
New York, The Museum of Modern Art & Minneapolis, The Minneapolis Art Institute, Paul Klee Drawings 1908-1940, 1952-53
London, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Fifty Drawings of Paul Klee. Collection of Curt Valentin, New York, 1953, no. 23
Hanover, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Paul Klee. Max Beckmann, 1954, no. 23
Berlin, Galerie Schuler, Paul Klee. Handzeichnungen, 1954, no. 23

La Revolution Surrealiste, 1925
Will Grohmann, Paul Klee, Handzeichnungen 1921-1930, Potsdam & Berlin, 1934, no. 56
Will Grohmann, Paul Klee, Geneva & Stuttgart, 1954, n.n.
Margaret Plant, Paul Klee. Figures and Faces, London, 1978, no. 122
The Paul Klee Foundation & Museum of Fine Arts, Bern, eds., Paul Klee Catalogue Raisonné 1923-1926, vol. IV, Bern, 2000, no. 3844, illustrated p. 364

Work is in excellent condition. Executed on cream wove paper laid down by the artist on card. There is a faint mat stain around the perimeter of the mount corresponding the the present window mat. There is some minor scattered surface dirt, but overall the sheet is fresh and the line is very strong.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Music served as a driving source of inspiration throughout Paul Klee’s career. When he became a “Bauhaus Master" in 1920, Klee was forced to devise an approach for teaching young artists. With his extensive musical background, his parents being musicians and he himself a talented violinist, it is only logical that he turned to the language and terms of music as a means to define the visual arts. In the years that followed, Klee experimented with contrapuntal procedures of drawing, arguably derived from the theory and practice of eighteenth-century polyphony. Drawings such as Drei sanfte Narrenworte precede his comprehensive masterpiece of 1932, Ad Parnassum, presumably titled in homage to Johann Josef Fux’s music treatise.

Klee attended opera nearly every night at the peak of the Weimar era. The present work exhibits his talented draftsmanship in the form of an amusing jester, likely inspired by one of the performances he saw. Will Grohmann explained Klee’s deep attraction to theatre, writing, “It was not the music alone that attracted him; he had a highly developed sympathy for that world of the contradictory, the illogical, the abstract… Klee liked the detached quality of operatic action; its human characters represent elementary facts rather than psychological entities like Good and Evil, the Pure and the Demonic, Ugliness and Beauty. The symbolic content is shared among a number of figures, so that the general is embodied in the individual” (Will Grohmann, op. cit, p. 245-46).