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Lot Essay
Schwere Dämmerung (Oppressive Twilight) is one of an extraordinarily precise and impressive series of watercolour paintings Klee made between 1925 and 1926 which make use of a unique, intensely detailed and fluid progression of rectangular forms and parallel lines, each sharply drawn in ink, to articulate spectacular landscapes and entire worlds of the imagination.
It was after the Bauhaus moved from Weimar to Dessau in 1925 that the graphic side of Klee’s art came into its own and, in many cases, came to determine, as in this work, the form of his paintings. The very first of these works to which Schwere Dämmerung belongs was a 1925 drawing entitled Der Käfer (The Beetle) and like this work, the majority of the ever more ambitious works that followed employed the grid of parallel lines to articulate natural forms, rolling landscapes and organic worlds seemingly at odds with the geometry and precision of Klee’s highly disciplined ink-drawn line.
In Schwere Dämmerung Klee has delineated a fantastical and almost manicured landscape suffused in a deep purple that lends the scene the atmosphere of twilight mentioned in the painting’s title. Like other such works in the series, such as Ansicht eines Berg-Heiligtums (View of a Mountain Sanctuary) in the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, or Heilige Inseln (Sacred Islands) in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the landscape Klee articulates in this lyrical, almost building-block manner seems to forge a creative bridge between landscape and architecture. In this way, the artist pictorially appears to assert a parallel between the creative act of the artist and the procreativity of nature itself. This was a cultural standpoint close to Klee’s own heart as he articulated in a lecture he gave in 1924: ‘Chosen are those artists who penetrate to the region of that secret place where primeval power nurtures all evolution. There, where the power-house of all time and space - call it brain or heart of creation - activates every function; who is the artist who would not dwell there?
In the womb of nature, at the source of creation, where the secret key to all lies guarded. But not all can enter. Each should follow where the pulse of his own heart leads. So, in their time, the Impressionists - our opposites of yesterday - had every right to dwell within the matted undergrowth of everyday vision. But our protruding heart drives us down, deep to the source of all. What springs from this source, whatever it may be called, dream, idea or fantasy - must be taken seriously only if it unites with the proper creative means to form a work of art. Then those curiosities become realities - realities of art which help to lift life out of its mediocrity. For not only do they, to some extent, add more spirit to the seen, but they also make secret visions visible’ (Paul Klee, On Modern Art, Jena, 1924, p. 49).
It was after the Bauhaus moved from Weimar to Dessau in 1925 that the graphic side of Klee’s art came into its own and, in many cases, came to determine, as in this work, the form of his paintings. The very first of these works to which Schwere Dämmerung belongs was a 1925 drawing entitled Der Käfer (The Beetle) and like this work, the majority of the ever more ambitious works that followed employed the grid of parallel lines to articulate natural forms, rolling landscapes and organic worlds seemingly at odds with the geometry and precision of Klee’s highly disciplined ink-drawn line.
In Schwere Dämmerung Klee has delineated a fantastical and almost manicured landscape suffused in a deep purple that lends the scene the atmosphere of twilight mentioned in the painting’s title. Like other such works in the series, such as Ansicht eines Berg-Heiligtums (View of a Mountain Sanctuary) in the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, or Heilige Inseln (Sacred Islands) in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the landscape Klee articulates in this lyrical, almost building-block manner seems to forge a creative bridge between landscape and architecture. In this way, the artist pictorially appears to assert a parallel between the creative act of the artist and the procreativity of nature itself. This was a cultural standpoint close to Klee’s own heart as he articulated in a lecture he gave in 1924: ‘Chosen are those artists who penetrate to the region of that secret place where primeval power nurtures all evolution. There, where the power-house of all time and space - call it brain or heart of creation - activates every function; who is the artist who would not dwell there?
In the womb of nature, at the source of creation, where the secret key to all lies guarded. But not all can enter. Each should follow where the pulse of his own heart leads. So, in their time, the Impressionists - our opposites of yesterday - had every right to dwell within the matted undergrowth of everyday vision. But our protruding heart drives us down, deep to the source of all. What springs from this source, whatever it may be called, dream, idea or fantasy - must be taken seriously only if it unites with the proper creative means to form a work of art. Then those curiosities become realities - realities of art which help to lift life out of its mediocrity. For not only do they, to some extent, add more spirit to the seen, but they also make secret visions visible’ (Paul Klee, On Modern Art, Jena, 1924, p. 49).