This androgynous Venus displays both female and male sexual organs. Her direct gaze confronts and challenges the viewer, and seemingly flaunts her dual sexuality. Paul Klee often used erotic imagery to represent facial features, or reversed the imagery, giving a face to the body. In Barbarian Venus, for example, the belly becomes a visual pun for creation, procreation and blatant, “barbaric” sexuality.
Details
- Artist Name: Paul Klee (Swiss, 1879-1940)
- Title: Barbarian Venus
- Date: 1921
- Medium: Watercolor, gouache and oil transfer drawing on plaster primed linen, mounted on cardboard
- Dimensions: comp: 16-1/4 x 10-5/8 in. (41.3 x 27.0 cm); mount: 17-5/8 x 12 in. (44.8 x 30.5 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection
- Accession Number: P.1953.062
- Copyright: © Norton Simon Museum
Object Information
Galka Scheyer, who purchased it in 1930;
Pasadena Art Institute, Pasadena, 1953-1954;
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena,1954-1975;
Norton Simon Museum, 1975.
Paul Klee
- Nationalgalerie Berlin, 1923-02 to
Paul Klee and the Myth
- Munich, Haus der Kunst, to 1999-10-01
Blue Four exhibition
- San Diego, San Diego Fine Arts Gallery, 1927-01 to 1927-02
- San Diego, San Diego Fine Arts Gallery, to
Blue Four exhibition
- Henry Art Gallery, 1927-10 to 1927-10
The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Paul Klee
- New York, The Daniel Gallery, 1925-02-20 to 1925-03-10
The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Paul Klee
- Los Angeles, University of California, Los Angeles, Art Department, 1926-11 to 1926-12-28
- Los Angeles, Los Angeles Museum, 1926-10 to
Paul Klee: Paintings and Watercolors from the Bauhaus Years 1921-1931
- Des Moines Art Center, 1973-09-18 to 1973-10-28
Paul Klee
- Norton Simon Museum, 1987-07-23 to 1988-05-15
The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Paul Klee
- Oakland Art Gallery, 1926-05-02 to 1926-06-15
German Expressionism
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1961-04-25 to 1961-06-04
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
Paul Klee
- Norton Simon Museum, 1986-06-05 to 1987-06-28
Impossible Realities: Marcel Duchamp and the Surrealist Tradition
- Norton Simon Museum, 1991-07-04 to 1992-03-08
The Blue Four
Die Blaue Vier: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Klee in der Neuen Welt
- Kunstmuseum Bern, 1997-12-05 to 1998-03-01
- Dusseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordhein-Westfalen, 1998-03-28 to 1998-06-28
The Spirit of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in the New World
- Norton Simon Museum, 1994-11-17 to 1996-01-14
Permanent and Loan Collection, 1973
- Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1973-01-30 to 1973-12-31
My Four Kings: Galka Scheyer and the Blue Four
- Norton Simon Museum, 2002-12-13 to 2003-04-14
- Haas, Robert B., Du, p. 42
- Paul Klee, p. 21
- Vishny, Michele, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, p. 93
- Jordan, Jim M., Arts Magazine, p. 154
- Vishny, Michele, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Art, p. 149
- Aichele, K. Porter, The Art Bulletin, pp. 462-463
- The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection, Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena, 1976, no. 271 pp. 108, 115
- Boas, Nancy, The Society of Six: California Colorists, 1988, p. 107
- Rewald, Sabine, Klee aus New York: Hauptwerke der Ammlung Berggruen im Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988, p. 29
- The Blue Four. Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, and Klee in the New World, 1997, no. 119 pp. 159, 351
- Paul Klee Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 3, 1919-1922, 1999, no. 2723
- Barnett, Vivian Endicott, The Blue Four Collection at the Norton Simon Museum, 2002, no. 321 pp. 297-300
- Graham, Lanier, Duchamp and Androgyny, 2003, fig. 15 p. 31
- Gilbert Holzgang, Galka Scheyer : Ein Leben für Kunst und Kreativität, 2023, p. 183 (ill.)
Additional Artwork by Artist
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