After a decade of teaching at the Bauhaus school in Germany, Paul Klee left the venerable institution in 1931 to dedicate more time to painting. At that time, Klee was developing his own take on Neo-Impressionism, and his pointillist methods employed the same natural forms that had served as his subject matter until this point. Rarely a purely abstract painter like his friend and colleague Vassily Kandinsky, Klee instead used nature as the basis for his poetic works. In Memory of a Bird, created at the height of his interest in Pointillism, Klee suggests the shape of the animal through the absence of watercolor. The cream of the paper provides the color and shape for the central form, while the surface is covered in multicolored squares and rectangles. The countless rows of dots remain secondary to the subject, and Klee’s command over the subtleties of color supports the serenity of the image overall.
Details
- Artist Name: Paul Klee (Swiss, 1879-1940)
- Title: Memory of a Bird
- Date: 1932
- Medium: Watercolor and pencil on laid paper
- Dimensions: 12-3/8 x 18-7/8 in. (31.4 x 47.9 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection
- Accession Number: P.1953.033
- Copyright: © Norton Simon Museum
Object Information
Galka Scheyer;
Pasadena Art Institute, Pasadena, 1953-1954;
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, 1954-1975;
Norton Simon Museum, 1975.
Paul Klee
- Los Angeles, Hollywood Gallery of Modern Art (Lorser Feitelson), 1935-07-31 to 1935-08
Paintings and Prints by Paul Klee
- San Francisco Museum of Art, 1937-01-12 to 1937-02-07
The EY Exhibition: Paul Klee - Making Visible
- Tate Modern, 2013-10-14 to 2014-03-09
Contemporary German Watercolor Painting
- California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1936-06-06 to 1936-08-01
The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Paul Klee
- Los Angeles, Los Angeles Museum, 1933-10-04 to 1933-10-30
Paul Klee Memorial Exhibition [organized by MOMA]
- San Francisco Museum of Art, 1941-04-14 to 1941-05-05
30 Years of Painting, Water Colors, Drawings and Lithographs by Paul Klee
- Modern Institute of Art (Beverly Hills, California), 1948-09-03 to 1948-10-06
50 years bauhaus
- Stuttgart, Wurttembergischer Kunstverein, 1968-05-05 to 1968-07-28
- Royal Academy of Arts (Great Britain), 1968-09-19 to 1968-10-27
- Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 1968-11-30 to 1969-01-01
- Paris, Musee National d'Art Moderne, 1969-04-01 to 1969-06-22
- Illinois Institute of Technology, 1969-08-25 to 1969-09-26
- Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1969-12-05 to 1970-02-01
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1970-03-16 to 1970-04-26
- Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1970 to 1971
- Tokyo, National Museum of Modern Art, 1971 to 1971
Selections from Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Paul Klee. The Blue Four Galka E. Scheyer Collection
- Seattle Art Museum, 1956-10-10 to 1956-11-04
- Portland, Portland Art Museum, 1956-11-08 to 1956-11-30
- , 1957-01-01 to 1957-01-31
- Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, 1957-03-02 to 1957-04-01
- Kansas City, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, 1957-11-15 to 1957-12-15
- San Francisco Museum of Art, 1958-01-14 to 1958-02-23
- Vancouver Art Gallery, 1956-07 to 1956-08-31
The Art of Paul Klee
- Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1960-04-12 to 1960-05-08
The Galka Scheyer Collection: Klee, Nolde, Jawlensky, Moholy-Nagy, Schmidt-Rottluff, Schwitters, Archipenko, Kandinsky, Lissitzky, Feininger, Kirchner, Dix_1
- La Jolla, Art Center in La Jolla, 1960-07-05 to 1960-08-14
Paul Klee: An Exhibition from the Galka E. Scheyer Collection of the Pasadena Art Museum
- University of California, Berkeley Art Museum, 1962-05-03 to 1962-05-27
Paul Klee: Fifty Paintings, Drawings and Prints from the Galka E. Scheyer Collection
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1959-10-24 to 1959-12-06
- Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, University Gallery, 1960-01-04 to 1960-02-08
- Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, 1960-03 to 1960-04
Paul Klee
- Norton Simon Museum, 1987-07-23 to 1988-05-15
Paul Klee
- Norton Simon Museum, 1986-06-05 to 1987-06-28
Maven of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in California
- Norton Simon Museum, 2017-04-07 to 2017-09-25
Bauhaus Painters; Spirit of Modernism: Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Oskar Schlemmer, Alexander Archipenko, Alexei Jawlensky and Others
- Seoul, Ho-Am Art Museum, 1996-02-08 to 1996-04-28
Permanent and Loan Collection, 1973
- Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1973-01-30 to 1973-12-31
The Spirit of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in the New World
- Norton Simon Museum, 1994-11-17 to 1996-01-14
The Blue Four-Galka Scheyer Collection From The Norton Simon Museum
- Henry Art Gallery, 1997-07-17 to 1997-10-05
My Four Kings: Galka Scheyer and the Blue Four
- Norton Simon Museum, 2002-12-13 to 2003-04-14
- Paul Klee, p. 29
- The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection, Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena, 1976, no. 282 pp. 109, 125
- Paul Klee: Catalogue Raisonne, Volume 6, 1931-1933, 2001, fig. 5703 p. 164, 206
- Barnett, Vivian Endicott, The Blue Four Collection at the Norton Simon Museum, 2002, no. 339 pp. 326-327
- Eye Film Institute, Oskar Fischinger, 1900-1967: Experiments in Cinematic Abstraction, 2012, Fig. 9 p. 57
- Steve Gibson, Stefan Arisona, Donna Leishman, and Atau Tanaka, Live Visuals: History, Theory, Practice, 2022, Figure 2.3 p. 50 (ill.)
Additional Artwork by Artist
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