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Linear Analogies: a Selection of Paul Klee’s Black and White Lithographies

March 14, 2021 by Mariabruna Fabrizi Leave a Comment

In the multiple explorations of form and composition by German-Swiss artist Paul Klee, a special place is occupied by works where the line is the main protagonist. In a famous quote, the artist describes the line as “a dot that went for a walk” underlining the dynamic nature of the line as the means to conduct the human eye across the space of a painting or a drawing. In the second volume of the collection of his Bauhaus lessons Infinite natural history (Band 2: Unendliche Naturgeschichte, first published in 1946) Klee addresses the analogy of pictorial form with natural processes, introducing how lines in a composition are submitted to specific logic of growth and progression. He further compares the organisational systems of plants to the linear organisations in a drawing. 

Some of the linear works by Klee evoke imaginary cities or landscapes and float in between abstraction and figuration with the urban monuments, the skylines, the streets or the territorial elements reduced to patterns or serial geometries. The repetitions are never mechanical and imply continuous variations in the evolution of the lines, like natural elements perennially in motion, connecting among each other, addressing tensions and converging into specific points. 

Paul Klee, Beride City on the Water, 1958 lithography

Paul Klee, Garden of Orpheus, 1958  lithography

Paul Klee, Botanical Garden, Palmate Plants, 1946  lithography

Paul Klee, Drawing Knotted in the Manner of a Net, 1920

Paul Klee, Site of Worship, 1958  lithography

Paul Klee, Architectural Review v.120 n.716 Sep 1956, 147

Paul Klee, Rock-Cut Temple, 1925

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