Cats in Art - part 4

This series features cats in art. Cats have been depicted in paintings and drawings by both unknown and famous artists throughout time. This series begins in 1400 BC through to 1997 AD.

For earlier works see parts 1 - 3.

This is part 4 of 5-part series on Cats in Art:

1905 Girl with a Cat by Paula Modersohn Becker (1876-1907)
oil on cardboard 72 x 49 cm
Private Collection

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) spent most of her childhood in Bremen, Germany, and decided to become a painter at a young age. After her education at a private painting and drawing school in Berlin, she continued her studies from 1898 at the artist’s colony Worpswede with Fritz Mackensen. In the village north Bremen she also met her future husband, the painter Otto Modersohn (1865-1943).

In addition to numerous paintings, impressionistic studies of the Worpswede moorland and birch tree landscape emerged during this period. These studies already show Modersohn-Becker’s preference for a strictly reduced picture composition and its departure from deep-illusion.

After a few years in the narrow circle of Worpswede painters, she travelled to Paris for the first time in 1900. There she encountered the works of the French avant-garde, who confirmed her in her search for new forms of expression. By 1907, three more stays in Paris followed. From 1903, she increasingly served the still-life to clarify formal questions – the influence of Paul Cézanne’s sill-lifes becomes apparent.

The human form is very much at the centre of Modersohn-Becker’s work; children, old women, and Worpsweder peasants inspired her to undertake portraiture.

Only after she died at an early age, her extensive work was seen and she was recognised as being among the pioneers of the modern style and the first woman to paint a full-length nude self-portrait.

Note: A series on the works of Paula Modersohn Becker can be found in the index of this blog.

before 1906 Cats by Carl Kahler
oil on canvas 80 x 120.6 cm
Private Collection

before 1906 Parlour Cats by Carl Kahler 
oil on canvas

1907-08 Children playing with a cat by Mary Cassatt
 (1844-1926)
oil on canvas 83.8 x 104.1
Private Collection

Mary Cassatt was one of the original Impressionists, rare for an American and for a woman. Cassatt was the only American to exhibit her work in an exhibit of the original group of Impressionist Artists, including Degas, Renoir and Monet. Cassatt said that she "hated conventional art" and when invited by Edgar Degas to exhibit with this group of independent artists in an exhibit of non-academic art she was overjoyed.

Mary Cassatt was born in 1844 in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, a town that is now part of Pittsburgh. Her father was a wealthy investment banker. Cassatt grew up in Pennsylvania, but lived in Germany and France for four years during her childhood. She entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1861. In 1865 she studied Old Masters paintings in Paris.

Cassatt returned to the United States when the Franco-Prussian War erupted in 1870, but she went back the next year, despite her father's objections. She travelled and studied in Italy, Spain, Belgium, and France before settling permanently in Paris in 1875. She lived there for the rest of her life, despite the apparent fact that her affection for the French people was not great, and lessened with the passage of time.

Edgar Degas became a close friend of Cassatt's, mentored her and invited her to exhibit with the Impressionists in 1877, 1879, 1880, 1881, and 1886. She refused to exhibit there in 1882 when Degas did not exhibit. She was commissioned to do a mural for the Chicago World's Fair in 1892. After the 1886 exhibit Cassatt developed a business relationship with an art dealer named Paul Durand-Ruel who sponsored her first solo exhibit in the Durand-Ruel gallery in New York in 1893. In 1903 another showing of her work was exhibited there. She visited the United States in 1904, and for the last time in 1908.

Note: A blog post on the works of Mary Cassatt can be found in the index of this blog.

1908  The Kittens' Recital by Carl Reichert (1836-1918)
oil on panel

1908 Cat and Plum Blossoms by Hishida Shunso (1874-1911)

Hishida Shunsō was the pseudonym of a Japanese painter from the Meiji period. One of Okakura Tenshin’s pupils along with Yokohama Taikan and Shimomura Kanzan, he played a role in the Meiji era innovation of Hihonga. His real name was Hishida Miyoji. He was also known for his numerous paintings of cats. 

1908 Woman with Cat by Kees van Dongen

Cornelis Theodorus Maria "Kees" van Dongen was a Dutch-French painter who was one of the leading Fauves. Van Dongen's early work was influenced by the Hague School and symbolism and it evolved gradually into a rough pointillist style. From 1905 onwards – when he took part at the controversial 1905 salon d’Automne exhibition – his style became more and more radical in its use of form and colour. The paintings he made in the period of 1905–1910 are considered by some to be his most important works.The themes of his work from that period are predominantly centered on the nightlife; he paints dancers, singers, masquerades and theatre. Van Dongen gained a reputation for his sensuous – at times garish – portraits of especially women.

1908 Woman with Cat by Kees van Dongen (1877-1968)
oil on canvas 81.5 x 100.5 cm
Milwaukee Art Museum

Cornelis Theodorus Maria "Kees" van Dongen was a Dutch-French painter who was one of the leading Fauves. Van Dongen's early work was influenced by the Hague School and symbolism and it evolved gradually into a rough pointillist style. From 1905 onwards – when he took part at the controversial 1905 salon d’Automne exhibition – his style became more and more radical in its use of form and colour. The paintings he made in the period of 1905–1910 are considered by some to be his most important works.The themes of his work from that period are predominantly centered on the nightlife; he paints dancers, singers, masquerades and theatre. Van Dongen gained a reputation for his sensuous – at times garish – portraits of especially women.

c1908 Sarah holding a cat by Mary Cassatt
oil on canvas 40.6 x 33 cm
Private Collection

before 1909 A Cat and her Kittens in the Artists Studio by Henriëtte Ronner-Knip (1821-1909)
oil on canvas 53 x 77.5 cm

before 1909 Kittens at Play by Henriëtte Ronner-Knip
(1821-1909)
oil on canvas 73 x 91 cm

before 1909 Playing Cats by Henriette Ronner-Knip (1821-1909)
oil on canvas

before 1909 The Happy Litter by Henriette Ronner-Knip
(1821-1909)
oil on panel 41.3 x 36.2 cm

before 1909 The Waste Paper Basket by Henriette Ronner-Knip (1821-1909)
oil on panel 32.5 x 45 cm

1909 The Cat by Raoul Dufy (1877-1953)
from Guillaume Apollinaire's "Le Besttiare"
xylograph (woodcut)

French painter, graphic artist, and designer. His early work was Impressionist in style, but he became a convert to Fauvism in 1905 after seeing Matisse's Luxe, calme et volupté (‘this miracle of creative imagination in colour and line’) at the Salon des Indépendants. He exhibited with the Fauves in 1906 and 1907, but in 1908 he worked with Braque at L'Estaque and abandoned Fauvism for a more sober style influenced by Cézanne. However, he soon returned to a lighter style and in the next few years developed the highly distinctive personal manner for which he became famous. It is characterized, in both oils and watercolours, by rapid calligraphic drawing on backgrounds of bright, thinly washed colour and was well suited to the scenes of luxury and pleasure Dufy favoured.

1910 Cat behind a Tree by Franz Marc (1880-1916)
oil on canvas 70 x 50 cm
Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Germany

Franz Marc was a German painter, active mainly in his native Munich. His early work was in an academic style, but visits to Paris in 1903 and 1907 introduced him to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. He was particularly impressed by the work of van Gogh, under whose influence his style moved towards Expressionism. In 1910 he met August Macke, who became his closest friend, and also Kandinsky; with them he was a leading member of the Blaue Reiter group, founded in 1911. Marc was of a deeply religious disposition (in 1906 he visited Mount Athos in Greece with its famous monasteries) and was troubled by a profound spiritual malaise; through painting he sought to uncover mystical inner forces that animate nature.

His ideas were expressed most intensely in paintings of animals, for he believed that they were both more beautiful and more spiritual than man. 

In 1912 Marc saw an exhibition of Futurist paintings in Berlin and also met Delaunay in Paris. These events helped to move his work towards abstraction, which uses panic-stricken animals to symbolise a world on the edge of destruction. By 1914, his paintings had become still more abstract, losing almost entirely any representational content. These last paintings are considered among the culminating works of German Expressionism. Marc was killed in action in the First World War.

1910 Marcella by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938)
oil on canvas 100 x 76 cm
Brücke Museum, Berlin

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was born in Aschaffenburg, Germany. He graduated with a diploma in engineering from the Royal College of Science and Technology in Munich in 1905, but was devoted to art, and after graduating, Kirchner and fellow ex-students Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff founded the artist group “die Brücke” (the Bridge) located in Dresden and from 1911 in Berlin. “Die Brücke” became an important avant-garde group in Germany until the group was dissolved in 1913 following ongoing conflicts between Kirchner and other group members.

In 1912, Kirchner met the dancers Gerda and Erna Schilling who posed for him in subsequent years. Erna became Kirchner’s partner until his death. After military service in Halle during the first years of the war, Kirchner suffered a mental and physical breakdown and in 1917 he moved to Davos, in Switzerland, where the Wildboden House became his home and a contact point for artists, such as Müller and Scherer, who came to visit and work with him.

In 1937, after Kirchner had gained an international reputation, the National Socialists removed 639 of his artworks from museums following the Nazi programme of confiscating “Degenerate Art”. In the same year, the Art Institute Detroit in the USA and the Kunsthalle Basel mounted Kirchner exhibitions. Kirchner committed suicide in 1938.

1910s Cat, Rock, and Peonies by unknown (Qing Dynasty)
colour on silk 21.1 x 20.6 cm
National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian

1912 The Bridge by Carl Olof Larsson
watercolour
Private Collection

Carl Olof Larsson was a Swedish painter representative of the Arts and Crafts movement. His many paintings include oils, watercolours, and frescoes. He is principally known for his watercolours of idyllic family life. He considered his finest work to be Midvinterblot (Midwinter Sacrifice), a large painting now displayed inside the Swedish National Museum of Fine Arts.

Note: A series on the works of Carl Olof Larsson can be found in the index of this blog.

1912 Two Cats by Franz Marc (1880-1916)
oil on canvas 98 x 74 cm
Offentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel, Switzerland

1912 Woman with a Cat by Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)
oil on canvas 78 x 77.2 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Pierre Bonnard was born in Fontenay-aux-Roses, France. He began studying law in Paris in 1887. In the same year he also attended the Académie Julian, and in 1888 entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he met Ker-Xavier Roussel and Edouard Vuillard, who became his lifelong friends. Bonnard gave up law to become an artist, and, after brief military service, he joined the group of young painters called the Nabis (the prophets) in 1889, which was organised by Paul Sérusier and included Maurice Denis, Paul Ranson, Roussel, Vuillard, and others. The Nabis, influenced by Paul Gauguin and Japanese prints, experimented with arbitrary colour, expressive line, a wide range of mediums, and flat, patterned surfaces.

In 1890 Bonnard shared a studio with Vuillard and Denis, and he began to make colour lithographs. In the following year, 1891, he met Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and had his first show at the Salon des Indépendants and in the Nabis’s earliest exhibitions at Le Barc de Boutteville. He exhibited with the Nabis until they disbanded in 1900.

In 1903 Bonnard participated in the first Salon d’Automne and in the Vienna Secession, and from 1906 he was represented by Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris. He travelled abroad extensively and worked at various locations in Normandy, the Seine valley, and the south of France, as well as in Paris. The Art Institute of Chicago mounted a major exhibition of the work of Bonnard and Vuillard in 1933, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, organised a Bonnard retrospectives in 1946 and 1964.

Note: A series on the works of Pierre Bonnard can be found in the index of this blog.

before 1913 Boy with Cats by Julius Adam (1852-1913)

The animal painter Julius Adam became mainly known for his paintings with kittens, earning him the nickname Kittenadam. He was born in Munich in 1852 into the important family of painters Adam. His father Julius Adam the elder was a photographer and lithographer and he trained his son early in his business. At the age of fourteen, Julius Adam the younger travelled to Rio de Janeiro and worked there as a landscape photographer. Six years later, he returned to Munich and studied at the School of Applied Arts under Michael Echter and in 1874 he took the natural and landscape class at the Art Academy. This was followed by an intensive apprenticeship under the influential colourist and representative of the Munich School of Painting Wilhelm von Diez. Initially, Julius Adam devoted himself primarily to genre painting until his cat pictures found great success in the mid-1880s and from then on he dedicated himself to paintings with animals. The highly esteemed and award winning painter Julius Adam died in 1913 in Munich.

before 1928 Cat Family by Léon Charles Huber (1858-1928)
oil on canvas

Léon Charles Huber was a French painter, born Montmartre, Paris, who specialised in animals, cats in particular. He studied painting at the L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts along with Jules Grun. He was also known for helping the poor by offering food and other services from his studio. He also tutored many young artists. He exhibited at the Salon from 1887, and won numerous awards.

before1913 Cat with her Kittens by Julius Adam (1852-1913)
oil on canvas 19 x 29 cm

before 1913 Three kittens on a sheet of music by Julius Adam (1851-1913)
oil on canvas

1914 The Cat by Bart van der Leck (1876-1958)
casein on cement board (asbestos) 37 x 29 cm
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

The son of a house painter, Bart van der Leck was born in Utrecht in 1876. His career began at 14 as an apprentice in a glass workshop and, after eight years spent working in stained glass studios, he went on to study at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam.

In 1913 Van der Leck was introduced to art collector Helene Kröller-Müller, credited with being one of the first to recognise the genius of Vincent van Gogh, and began an important stage of his career working on important commissions for her and her husband, Anton Kröller. This couple’s incredible art collection is now housed in the renowned Kröller-Müller Museum, within which many of Van der Leck’s works are displayed.

Van der Leck moved to the artists’ community of Laren in 1916, where he met Piet Mondrian and began to paint abstract compositions comprising simple, basic shapes in primary colours. In 1917 he co-founded the De Stijl art journal with Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, although he refused to sign the movement’s first manifesto and left the group just one year later. He continued to work on abstract compositions for the rest of his life, finally settling in Blaricum in Noord-Holland, where he died peacefully at his easel two weeks before his 82nd birthday.

1914 Young woman in a small winged hat holding a Cat by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926)
pastel on paper

1917 Still Life with Cats by Max Beckman (1884-1950)
oil on canvas 65 x 100 cm
Gallery Pels-Leusden, Berlin

Max Beckman is widely acknowledged as one of Germany's leading twentieth-century artists. A figurative painter throughout his career, Beckmann depicted the world around him with an unparalleled intensity. His work emerges directly from his experiences of the First and Second World Wars, the political upheavals of the 1920s and 1930s, the rise of Nazism, exile in Amsterdam and his final emigration to the United States. By capturing the objects and events that surrounded him, Beckmann hoped to grasp the deeper mysteries underlying human existence. He perceived and painted the world as a vast stage, at once real and magical, upon which his own life and the traumas of contemporary history were closely intertwined.

Beckmann continuously engaged with new artistic developments and was eager to compete with his peers. However, he refused to join any movement or group, cultivating the image of an isolated figure within the history of modern art. Nevertheless, his work after the First World War had strong affinities with German Expressionism and Cubism. During the 1920s Beckmann was regarded as a forerunner of New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit), and a decade later incorporated abstract elements in his paintings. His ability to respond to artistic challenges ensured the continuing vitality of his art.

before 1918 A Young Girl with a White Cat by Antoine Jean Bail (1830-1918)
oil on canvas 59 x 73 cm

Very little information on Antoine Jean Bail could be found. He was a French Neoclassical artist. born in Paris in 1771. His father, who was a miniature painter, began to teach him to draw at the age of six, and showed himself from the first to be an exacting master.

before 1918 before Kittens playing on a Spinning Wheel by Carl Reichert (1836-1918)
oil on panel 36 x 30 cm
Private Collection

1918 Study of a Cat by Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938)
oil on canvas
Private Collection

Suzanne Valadon was a French painter who was born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. She was also the mother of painter Maurice Utrillo. 

Valadon spent nearly 40 years of her life as an artist. The subjects of her drawings and paintings, such as “Joy of Life” (1911), included mostly female nudes, portraits of women, still lifes, and landscapes. She never attended the academy and was never confined within a tradition.

She was a model for many renowned artists. Among them, Valadon appeared in such paintings as Dance at Bougival (1883) and Dance in the City by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1883), and Suzanne Valadon (1885) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

1919 Bouquet and a Cat by Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938)
oil on canvas 66.5 x 35 cm
Private Collection

1920 By day she made herself into a cat by Arthur Rackham (1867-1939)
from Hansel & Gretel & other Tales by Brothers Grimm

Arthur Rackham, a famous book illustrator, was born in London as one of 12 children. 1884 at the age of 17 he was sent on and ocean voyage to Australia to improve his fragile health. At the age of 18 he worked as a clerk at the Westminster Fire Office and began studying part-time at the Lambeth School of Art.

In 1892 he left his job and started working for The Westminster Budget as a reporter and illustrator. His first book illustrations were published in 1893 in To the Other Side by Thomas Rhodes.

Note: A series on the works of Arthur Rackham can be found in the index of this blog.

1920 Raminou sitting on a cloth by Suzanne Valadon
 (1865-1938)

1922 The White Cat by Franz Marc 50 x 60 cm
Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle, Halle (Salle), Germany 

before 1923 A Playful Moment by Georges Croegaert
(1848-1923)
oil on canvas 41.3 x 32.7 cm

Georges Croegaert was a Belgian academic painter who spent most of his career in Paris. He is known for his genre paintings of scenes from elegant society and portraits of women. He also had a reputation for his humorous depictions of red-robed Catholic Cardinals executed in a highly realist style.

He was born in Antwerp. He studied at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts. He moved to Paris in 1876 where he remained active as an artist for the rest of his life. He had a successful career as a portrait and genre painter. His paintings received critical acclaim and were sought after by English and American collectors. He exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon between 1882 and 1914 and in Vienna in 1888. He died in Paris in 1923 after a long and successful career.

before 1923 Girl with Cat in the Kitchen by by Carl Emil Mücke (aka Dusseldorf)
oil (1847-1923)

before 1923 Kittens and the Fishbowl by by Carl Emil Mücke (aka Dusseldorf) (1847-1923)
oil

before 1923 Napping by Georges Croegaert (1848-1923)
oil on panel 35 x 26 cm
Private Collection

before 1923 The Little Frog by by Carl Emil Mücke (aka Dusseldorf) (1847-1923)
oil

1923 Cat Games by Georges Croegaert
oil on wood panel 35 x 27 cm

1924 Small sitting cat by Ferdinand Henri Oger (1872-1929)
etching 11.7 x 7.9 cm (plate)

1924 Portrait of Natasha Lancere with a Cat by Zinaida Serebriakova (1884-1967)

Zinaida Serebriakova was a major figure of Russian painting in the early 20^th century: her French father, Evguni Lanceray, was an equestrian sculptor, and her maternal grandfather, the painter and art  critic Alexandre Benois, was a founder member of the Mir Iskusstva (“house of art”), who encouraged the teenage girl’s artistic calling. He sent her to St. Petersburg to study painting at the school founded by the art patron Maria Tenisheva, followed by a period spent with the famous realist painter Ilya Repin and the portrait painter Ossip Braz. In 1902-03, when still a teenage girl, she made a journey to Italy. In 1905 she married her cousin Boris Serebriakov, and attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. Her early colourful pictures, with intentionally monumental forms, depicted the Russian landscape, its peasants, people working in fields, and popular traditions, in a vein still inspired by the spirit of Repin.

Up until the revolution, her career went from strength to strength. Then came a dark period: her family’s estate was burnt to the ground; and her husband died of typhoid. She found herself alone and penniless, with four children to bring up. She then started to produce works with pencil and charcoal, expressing an obviously melancholy mood. In 1920, she set up home in Petrograd, but refused all commissions involving propaganda. She confined herself to the portrait genre and did not take part in any revolutionary avant-garde experiments. In 1924 she returned to Paris, where she lived a withdrawn life. She embarked on a cycle of portraits, depicting fishermen and peasants. Travelling to Morocco, she transposed that country’s luminosity in her portraits of young Berber women. In 1966, 50 years after first being recognised, she was given major exhibitions in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, and her albums were printed in large editions.

1925 The Cat and the Two Sparrows by Marc Chagall
(1887-1985)
etching with hand-colouring 38 x 30 cm

Marc Zakharovich Chagall was a Russian-French artist of Belarusian Jewish origin. An early modernist, he was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in virtually every artistic format, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints.

Born in Vitebsk, Russia, of a deeply religious Jewish family. First artistic instruction under Penn, a local painter, then spent 1907-10 in St Petersburg, where he entered the Imperial School for the Protection of the Fine Arts, and later studied under Bakst. Lived 1910-14 in Paris, where he met Apollinaire, Delaunay, Leger, Modigliani and Lhote. Somewhat influenced by Cubism, but differed from it in his love of fantasy. He held his first one-man exhibition at the Galerie Der Sturm, Berlin, 1914. He returned to Russia the same year and had to remain there because of the war. 

After the Revolution, he was appointed Fine Arts Commissar for the province of Vitebsk and directed an art academy; he also executed murals for Granovsky's Jewish Theatre in Moscow. Spent 1922-3 in Berlin, then 1923-40 in Paris, except for visits to Egypt, Palestine, Holland, Spain, Portugal and Italy; in addition to paintings he made illustrations for Gogol's “Dead Souls,” for La Fontaine's Fables and the Bible. He was in the USA as a refugee 1941-47, then returned to France, settling in 1950 at Saint Paul de Vence. His later works include a new ceiling painting for the Paris Opéra and, from 1957 a number of commissions for stained glass.

Note: A series on the works of Marc Chagall can be found in the index of this blog.

1926 Tama the Cat by Hiroaki Takahashi (1871-1945)
woodblock print

Hiroaki Takahashi was born in Tokyo in 1871.As a young artist he was given the artistic name Shotei by his uncle, Matsumoto Fuko, under whose tutelage he was apprenticing. When he was 16 years old, he started a job with the Imperial Household Department of Foreign Affairs, where he copied the designs of foreign ceremonial objects. As with many Japanese woodblock artists over his lifetime he signed his work with various names and worked for several publishing companies. He founded the Japan Youth Painting Society in 1889. In 1907, as a successful artist, he was recruited byShozaburo Watanabe to contribute to the Shin Hanga ("New Prints") art movement in Japan. Watanabe helped to fulfil the Western demand for Ukiyoe woodblock prints which would be similar to familiar historical masters of that genre, including Hiroshige. In about 1921 Shotei added the artistic name of Hiroaki. In 1923 the Great Kanto earthquake and subsequent fire destroyed Watanabe's facilities; this included all Shin Hanga woodblocks. Thus, Shotei recreated prior designs destroyed in the Great Kanto earthquake and also continued to produce new woodblocks.

before 1928 A Basket of Cats by Léon Charles Huber
 (1858-1928)
oil on canvas 38.5 x 54 cm
Private Collection

before 1928 Kittens at Play by Léon Charles Huber (1858-1928)
oil on canvas

before 1928 Mother Cat with two Kittens by Leon Charles Huber (1858-1928)
oil on canvas

before 1928 Posing Kitten by Leon Charles Huber (1858-1928)

before 1928 The Little Darlings by Leon Charles Huber
(1858-1928)
oil on canvas 41 x 33 cm

before 1928 Two Cats by Clementine Nielssen (1842-1928)

Clementine Nielssen (1842-1928, Austrian-German) was a 19^th century still life artist who also specialised in painting animals. Not much is known about her, unfortunately. She did live with her husband in both Munich and Norway during the 1880’s.

1928 Cat and Bird by Paul Klee (1879-1940)
oil and ink on gessoed canvas, mounted on wood
 38.1 x 53.2 cm
MoMA, New York

Paul Klee was a Swiss born painter, with a unique style that was influenced by expressionism, cubism, surrealism, and orientalism. His written collections of lectures, Writings on Form and Design Theory are considered as important to modern art as Leonardo da Vinci’s written works were to the Renaissance. As a child, Klee was mainly oriented as a musician, having played the violin since he was eight, but in his teen years, he found that art allowed him freedom to explore his style and express his radical ideas. Although Klee is now considered a master of colour theory, he spent a long time in his search for his sense of colour. At first, Klee drew in black and white, saying he would never be a painter. But as an adult, after a visit to Tunisia, in which he was impressed by the quality of light, he had found his sense of color and began experimenting with his newfound decision to be a painter.

Klee spent much of his adult life teaching at various universities and art schools, including the German Bauhaus School of Art and Düsseldorf Academy. During his tenure at Düsseldorf, he was singled out as a Jew by the Nazi party. The Gestapo searched his home and he was fired from his job. Some of his later works were also seized by the Nazis.

Although the artist was born in Switzerland, he was not born a Swiss citizen. His father was a German national, and citizenship being decided on paternity, Klee was born a German citizen. His request for Swiss citizenship was not granted until six days after his untimely death from undiagnosed scleroderma. Klee’s legacy includes over 9,000 works of art, which have inspired many other painting and musical compositions. In 1938 he was immortalised by Steinway Pianos in their “Paul Klee Series” pianos.