Has head, hand, foot and heart

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Has head, hand, foot and heart , watercolor and pen on cotton, glued over cardboard, 1930, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf

Hat Head, Hand, Foot and Heart is a watercolor by Paul Klee from 1930.

history

The North Rhine-Westphalia art collection in Düsseldorf acquired this picture in 1960 with the collection of the Pittsburgh entrepreneur G. David Thompson. The origin of the title of the picture is unclear. On the one hand, the Bauhaus Dessau organized a “beard-heart-nose-festival” in 1928, at which Klee's student Herbert Bayer was also present. On the other hand, Klee chose the title “Nose, Mouth, Breasts; Bust, Lips, Breasts ”for another work. Klee's friend Hans Arp had also created a picture called “Head, Eyes, Nose, Mustache”.

description

A small red heart is located in the center of a broad, pale red cross that extends over almost the entire image area. In the upper left corner, like a child's drawing, there appears a stylized head with a white headband, plate-like blue eyes without pupils, the nose is marked by a thin line, underneath a tiny mouth, indicated by two parallel lines. Clockwise in the next corners, on each of the elongated gray-blue patches of color, there is a stick with one hand, a stick with hand and foot and another stick with one foot, which, like the other parts of the body, is made in a pale red color. The background of the picture is off-white with light gray or blue-gray shadows on the floor and in the upper left corner of the picture.

interpretation

The watercolor is seen as a disguised representation of Christ with a parodic undertone. With regard to the opposite George Grosz led Gotteslästerungsprozeß Klee was a possible blasphemy avoid -Vorwurf. In the picture, an atheistic position of the artist becomes clear, which is documented from text and image testimony of the artist from his entire creative period.

reception

In 1999 Marianne Schroeder was influenced by the watercolor for the composition How the clover became four leaves . The work was premiered by the Ensemble Sortisatio and recorded on the CD 8 Pieces on Paul Klee .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Donat de Chapeaurouge: Paul Klee and the Christian heaven . Steiner Franz Verlag, Stuttgart 1990, p. 10 ff.
  2. ↑ Quoted from a brief introduction by Steiner Verlag, see web link

Web links