Paul Klee | "Formel eines Krieges"

KLEE, PAUL
1879 Münchenbuchsee - 1940 Muralto/ Ticino

Title: "Formel eines Krieges".
Date: 1936.
Technique: Oil and watercolour on MBM (FRANCE) INGRES D'ARCHES (watermark).
Measurement: 48 x 62,5cm.
Notation: Signed lower left (faded): Klee. Titled and dated verso lower centre: Formel eines Krieges 1936-2.
Frame/Pedestal: Craftman's frame.

On the verso of the work is another drawing in pen and graphite.

Provenance:
- Lily Klee, Bern
- Klee Society, Bern
- Curt Valentin (Buchholz Gallery, Valentin Gallery), Berlin/ New York
- Paul Rand, Weston
- Beyeler Gallery, Basel
- Wolfgang Wittrock Art Trade, Düsseldorf
- Private collection Germany

Exhibitions:
- Zurich 1940, cat. no. 10
- Art Hall Basel 1941, cat.-no. 246
- Düsseldorf 1991
- Art Collection North Rhine-Westphalia, Düsseldorf/ Stuttgart 1995, cat. no. 203
- National Gallery Berlin 2008-2009

Literature:
- Paul Klee Stiftung (ed.): Paul Klee - Catalogue Raisonné, 1934-1938, vol. 7, Bern 2014, cat. rais. no. 6913, ill.
- Grohmann, Will: Paul Klee, Geneva/Stuttgart 1954, p. 310
- Kersten, Wolfgang: Paul Klee. Übermut. Allegorie der künstlerischen Existenz, Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 60
- Exhib.-Cat. Paul Klee - Das Schaffen im Todesjahr, Kunstmuseum Bern, Stuttgart 1990, p. 216, ill.

- Typical late work by Klee from the second half of the 1930s
- Elaborate and clear, reduced formal language of a mature artist.