Lot 222 Dα

“Der Seiltänzer” of 1923 is one of Paul Klee's best-known graphic works. Created in the form of an oil transfer (resp. oil-paint drawing) and watercolour based on a pencil drawing (see cat. rais. 3215, 48.7 x 32.2 as well as 3309, 28.1 x 22 cm, both works from the artist's estate, Lily Klee, Bern), Klee also utilised the motif for the equally famous colour lithograph found here. The print was made at the lithographic printing press in Weimar and published in combination with original prints and photolithographs by other artists in the portfolio “Kunst der Gegenwart”. Artistically it is the most important sheet.
Wolfgang Wittrock has pointed out how different medial and art-making processes mutually influenced one another in Paul Klee's work: drawing, the transfer process (which Klee favoured for lithography) and the oil-transfer technique he developed (Wolfgang Wittrock, Erläuterungen zu Klees graphischen Techniken, in: Paul Klee: Das Werk der Jahre 1919-1933; Gemälde, Handzeichnungen, Druckgraphik, exhib. cat. Cologne 1979, p. 137). For this colour lithograph Klee only used one stone to add tone to the image; in the centre he has left the bars of a constructive cross blank, vertically and horizontally defining the surface area of the ground plane. This static element is equally effective in specifying the coordinates of an imaginary space in which the linear structure and the tightrope walker float, printed in black. Pockets of leftover ink on the print are reminders of the oil transfer technique.
For Klee, drawings were a fundamental means of expression from the very beginning. However, the spontaneity and dynamism in the expressive illustrations of 1911/1912 for Voltaire's “Candide” had by this time made way for a line that has taken over as a medium for expressing a masterful synthesis, a new-found pictorial architecture. In the composition here, this also includes the balanced centring of the graphic motif, without any overlapping or links to the edges.
The “Seiltänzer” is not just a realisation of formal principles from Klee's early teachings at the Bauhaus. The artist has not excluded fantasy and ideas. He seems to metaphorically trace narratives from life in an abstract manner: perils, human naiveties, playful and audacious experiments - not least in matters of love, after all, the tightrope walker hovers above the suggestion of a young woman's profile. His fragile structure and his balance find a solitary anchoring point far below, corresponding to “her” eye. As long as she is there, he is additionally ensured a rescuing means of departure via the ladders and ramps.
The “Seiltänzer” has become a classic visual example for Klee's efforts - articulated early in his career - to “bring architectonic and poetic painting into harmony” (cited in Christian Geelhaar, Paul Klee: Leben und Werk, Cologne 1974, p. 28).


Comparative illustration: Paul Klee, Der Seiltänzer. 1923, 121. (Sonderklasse, von Klee bez. „S.-Cl")
Watercolour over oil colour drawing 48.7 x 32.2 cm
From: Jürgen Glaesemer, Paul Klee. Die farbigen Werke im Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern 1976, p. 216