Temple Gardens Print (1920) by Paul Klee, German, born Switzerland (1879 - 1940)

 

Highlights

 

• Professionally framed in brown wood with brown/orange mat
• Signed in the print/plate middle upper right
• Exhibition poster by the Department of Twentieth Century Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1987)
  
• Includes hanging hardware and is ready to hang

 

Details

 

• Image Size: 21 x 28 inches
• Paper Size: 24 x 28
• Frame Size: 30 x 34 x 1 inches
• Medium: Paper
• Edition: Exhibition Poster
• Provenance: New Danville, PA Estate

 

Comments

 

• Temple Gardens is an exhibition poster print produced by the Department of Twentieth Century Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1987 based on the original watercolor on paper by Paul Klee in 1920.
• Temple Gardens appears to recall Klee's impressions from his visit to Tunisia with August Macke in April 1914. The watercolor has the brilliance of a stained-glass window on a sunny day. Stairways lead to the doors of various garden pavilions, palm trees peek over sections of high walls, and domed towers are here and there. 
• Klee sometimes liked to rearrange his compositions with scissors. Perhaps in this instance, he thought the work looked too symmetrical and therefore cut it into three sections and moved the center one to the left. Now the site depicted in Temple Gardens, which earlier was only pleasantly full of the "angles and corners" he had admired in Kairouan, has become truly labyrinthine.

 

Condition (Please see grading guide below)

 

• (I) Overall: Very Good
• (II) Content: Excellent
• (III) Frame: Very Good (frame has some dents, dings, scuffs and scratches; Dust cover intact; hanging hardware attached)

 

Artist Bio

 

• Born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, a suburb of Bern, in 1879, Paul Klee nevertheless retained the German citizenship of his father. In his youth he was torn between music and painting but decided to go to Munich (1898–1901) to learn to draw. After an extended trip to Italy (October 1901–May 1902), Klee returned to Bern, where he undertook a prolonged self-education as an artist. 
• Later, Klee's contact with Wassily Kandinsky, whom he met in 1911 and with whom he had a lifelong friendship, and his association with the Blaue Reiter group, which he joined in 1912, proved decisive. He was also influenced by the Cubism of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso and took great interest in the paintings of Robert Delaunay and August Macke, which employed abstract planes of translucent color. 
• On a trip to Tunisia in 1914, Klee fell in love with color, and by 1915 he had devised the unique style of abstracted forms and symbols that characterized much of his later work. Klee had many talents; besides being a painter and a draftsman, he was also a master violinist, poet, art and music critic, and teacher.
• Klee was most productive while teaching at the Bauhaus, first in Weimar (1921–26) and then in Dessau (1926–31). During those years he produced almost half of his nearly ten thousand works on paper, mostly small-scale watercolors and drawings. Klee taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf from 1931 to 1933 but left Germany when his art was declared "degenerate" by the National Socialists. Returning to Bern he was diagnosed with scleroderma, an incurable disease that made it increasingly difficult for him to work during the last seven years of his life.

 

References

 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Grading Guide

 

Notes:

• The condition grade is a subjective rating based on the observed objective physical features of the item to the naked eye
• The condition grade does not factor in the perceived beauty or aesthetic impact of the content itself
• Please view all of the item pictures and video to make your own informed condition decision before purchasing

Scale:

• Excellent: No damage or issues barely perceptible from close viewing distance and bright lighting conditions
• Very Good: Issues visible from close viewing distance and normal lighting conditions
• Good: Issues visible from normal viewing distance and lighting conditions but do NOT significantly detract from the overall look of the work
• Fair: Issues that are immediately apparent from normal viewing distance and lighting conditions AND significantly detract from the overall look of the work
• Poor: Severe condition issues that require repair and some may be beyond repair

 

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