reception
The angel of history
Walter Benjamin used the Angelus Novus for multilayered reflections and thought images. Paul Klee’s work made an impression on him early on. In October 1917 Benjamin wrote that Klee was the only modern painter who touched him and thus motivated him to study the basics of painting. His wife Dora gave him Klee’s demonstration of the miracle in 1920 (watercolor and pen, plaster primer on cardboard, 26.4 × 22.4 cm, since 1962 in the Museum of Modern Art , New York). He received it with enthusiasm: “I love him very much and this is the most beautiful of all the pictures I saw of him.” Shortly after purchasing the Angelus Novus , Benjamin wrote letters to Gershom Scholem, to whom he initially gave the picture to keep had associations about Kabbalah , angelology and demonology and described the figure as a «newly created Kabbalah protector». As a messenger of the Kabbalah , the angel has a firm place in the communication between the two in the following years. In the course of 1921 Benjamin also planned to publish a magazine with contentious philosophical and literary texts, which he gave the title Angelus Novus . However, the project was not implemented. The image was also included as “the other in man” in the essay on Karl Kraus, completed in February 1931, and in the autobiographical reflections of Agesilaus Santander in August 1933 .
The figure was particularly emphasized in the text On the Concept of History , in its IX. Thesis describes Benjamin as the angel of history :
— Walter Benjamin: On the concept of history (1940), thesis IX
Angelus Novus in music, film and literature
The Icelandic singer, actor and composer Egill Ólafsson released a solo album in 2001 called Angelus Novus . Both the entire album and the title song of the same name refer to the work of Paul Klee.
In 2003 the Ensemble Sortisatio recorded the composition N-gl by John Wolf Brennan, which relates to the painting, on the CD 8 Pieces on Paul Klee .
The American artist and musician Laurie Anderson deals with the Angelus Novus in her song The Dream Before on the album Strange Angels from 1989. The story is set in Berlin , probably in reference to Walter Benjamin’s birthplace.
In addition, Wim Wenders feature film Der Himmel über Berlin from 1987 refers to the same and Klee’s picture.
The Austrian theater group TheaterAngelusNovus (1981–1988) under the direction of Josef Szeiler , who v. a. occupied with texts by Bert Brecht , Heiner Müller and Homer , made reference to the picture and the text by Walter Benjamin.
A series of publications, Engel der Geschichte, by the wood cutter HAP Grieshaber, refers directly to Walter Benjamin’s text. Twenty-three issues appeared between 1964 and 1981.
The Afghan author and director Aboozar Amini (* 1985) named his 2014 short film about two Afghan children and their family on the run to Turkey, Angelus Novus — The Journey into the Unknown .
Is there an angel named Benjamin?
In 9.21 King of the Damned and 9.22 Stairway to Heaven, an angel named Benjamin appears as part of Castiel’s angelic faction. Despite having the same name, this Benjamin does not appear to be the same angel.
Who is the angel Benjamin?
Benjamin
| Name | Benjamin |
| Actor | Miranda Edwards |
| Dates | Before humanity – 2017 (killed by Lily Sunder) |
| Location | |
| Occupation | Angel |
What does the name Ben mean spiritually?
Benjamin comes from the Old Testament of the Bible, and in Hebrew means “son of the right hand.” The Benjamin of the Bible was the youngest of Jacob’s twelve sons; the expression “the Benjamin of the family” means the youngest child.
Who is the artist of the Angelus Novus?
The Angelus Novus by Paul Klee is a monoprint, showing “an angel, contemplated and fixated on an object, slowly moving away from it”, according to the purchaser of the piece of art, German philosopher Walter Benjamin.
7- Castle and Sun
Castle and Sun, 1928, is an abstract cityscape by Paul Klee.
The colors in this work are truly stunning, with triangles and rectangles offering an abstract form of an urban scene. This luminosity has contributed to this work becoming one of the most reproduced of all Klee’s works, along with others such as Angelus Novus and Twittering Machine
Burg und Sonne was the original title of this work, which translates directly as Castle and Sun, capturing the main points of attention in this painting. Some have misinterpreted that the sun is actually a moon, but the title of the painting makes this clear. Klee himself made several of these intricate tile scenes and they have proved to be among the most beloved by his admirers.
The creation of form through an abstract formation of geometric shapes is more reminiscent of the work of Wassily Kandinsky and other members of the Bauhaus movement. Klee is known to have aligned himself with Bauhaus artists in the early 20th century, so the similarities are to be expected. Klee’s color palette helped him maintain his artistic independence.
8- Flower Myth
Flower Myth is an expressionist work by Paul Klee from 1918. It was created during Klee’s early mystical-abstract period, and contains much more than one might guess at first glance.
Against a deep red, seemingly spacey background, a floating plant grows in the center of the painting, accompanied by simple symbols of the sun, moon and stars. A bird approaches the flower opening from above. A thin silver line frames the composition.
Paul Klee did not depict objects. Instead, he used the typical symbols of plants and trees, celestial bodies and the Earth, among others. This shows that he departed from “realistic” representation. He does not deal with a specific time, date or season. Klee considered the totality of creation. The proximity of the simultaneous representation of the sketched elements-the earth, sun, moon, and stars-suggests this.
Paul Klee also did not refer to a specific plant. His interest is in plants in general: a plant that grows from a bulb; that has roots, leaves, and a bud blooms at the top, already r esembling the fruit that will be. A creature approaches to collect the pollen. It underlines the cyclical character of life and growth in the universe.
The Rise of Nazism
Under the rise of Nazism, Benjamin’s dream of becoming Germany’s leading critic, and Klee’s work as a member of the faculty of the Bauhaus, came under severe threat. Klee was dismissed from his teaching job in 1933 when Hitler rose to power, and moved to Bern, Switzerland. Several of his paintings ended up in the Nazis’ Degenerate Art Exhibition of 1937. Benjamin had left Germany right before Hitler’s accession to power, and first went to Spain, then Paris. He had to leave behind his beloved angel painting, but a friend brought it to him in 1935. This was the year the Nuremberg laws were adopted, redefining German citizenship and leaving Benjamin, the Jewish philosopher, a stateless man. When the Second World War broke out, Benjamin began to write “On the Concept of History,” a fragmentary text attempting to make sense of the dark downwards spiral the world was caught in. In this text, the image of Angelus Novus served as Benjamin’s touchstone:
“There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair , to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm.”
In 1940, when France surrendered to the Nazis, it meant imminent disaster for Jewish refugees such as Benjamin, and all the hope he’d had left for his future was shattered. While fleeing from Paris across the Pyrenees, in the hopes of reaching Lisbon and setting sail to New York, Benjamin, fearing capture by the Nazis, swallowed a lethal dose of morphine pills in the Catalan seaside town of Port Bou. His tombstone in Port Bou reads: “There is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” Klee died in Switzerland that same year from the disease scleroderma. Inscribed on his tombstone are the words: “I cannot be grasped in the here and now, for my dwelling place is as much among the dead, as the yet unborn, slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual, but still not close enough.”
Individual evidence
- Lothar Lang (ed.): Paul Klee. The twittering machine and other grotesques , Eulenspiegel Verlag, Berlin GDR, 1982, p. 206
- Ingrid Riedel: Angel of Change: The Angel Pictures Paul Klees , Herder Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau, 2000, ISBN 978-3-451-05452-5 , p. 36.
- Ingrid Riedel: Angel of Change: Die Engelbilder Paul Klees , p. 35.
- Walter Benjamin: Collected Letters , edited by Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz, 6 volumes, Frankfurt a. M. 1995-2000, Volume II, p. 93
- Walter Benjamin: Collected Letters , edited by Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz, 6 volumes, Frankfurt a. M. 1995-2000, Volume II, p. 160
- Walter Benjamin: Gesammelte Schriften , edited by Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Werkausgabe edition suhrkamp), Frankfurt a. M. 1980, Volume I.2: Treatises, pp. 697 f.
2- Senecio
Senecio or Head of an Aging Man is a 1922 cubist painting by Klee. It is currently housed in the Kunstmuseum Basel.
Klee’s adaptation of the human head divides an old man’s face into orange, red, yellow and white rectangles. The flat geometric squares within the circle resemble a mask or the patches of a harlequin, hence the title’s reference to the artist-performer Senecio. The triangle and curved line above the left and right eyes respectively give the illusion of a raised eyebrow.
The use of lines, ambiguous shapes and space demonstrate the principles of Klee’s art, in which simple graphic elements are “set in motion by the energy of the artist’s mind.”
His Career
Klee’s artistic career started at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts where he got traditional education. Gradually, his own style that features vivid colors, complex lines, and geometric shapes emerged. He got more and more successful when he started to join the groups like Blue Rider and Bauhaus where he worked with other avant-garde artists like Wassily Kandinsky and Lyonel Feininger.
However, Klee’s imagination was not daunted by such obstacles as health problems and political strife. The abundance of his talent included paintings, drawings, etchings, and writing which therefore made him one of the most outstanding artists of his time.
What Became of Angelus Novus?
The angel, like Benjamin, roamed around like a vagabond for years. Before Benjamin left Paris, he entrusted Angelus Novus and his papers to the author Georges Bataille, who managed to keep them safe in the Bibliothèque Nationale until the liberation. After the war, his possessions were passed on to the Frankfurt School philosopher Theodor Adorno. They later came into the hands of Benjamin’s close friend, the Kabbalist scholar Gershom Scholem in Jerusalem. Finally, in 1987, Angelus Novus ended up at the Israel Museum, gifted by Scholem’s widow.
Today, the angel rarely travels – a 2016 appearance at Centre Pompidou in Paris was one of the rare exceptions – but one need only read Benjamin’s writings on this “Angel of History” to feel as though surrounded by its strange and powerful presence.
History
The artist’s friend Walter Benjamin, a noted German critic and philosopher, purchased the print in 1921. In September 1940 Benjamin committed suicide during an attempt to flee the Nazi regime. After World War II, Benjamin’s friend Gershom Scholem, a distinguished scholar of Jewish mysticism, inherited the drawing. According to Scholem, Benjamin felt a mystical identification with the Angelus Novus and incorporated it in his theory of the “angel of history,” a melancholy view of historical process as an unceasing cycle of despair.
In the ninth thesis of his 1940 essay “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, Benjamin describes Angelus Novus as an image of the angel of history:
How did Paul Klee come up with the Angelus Novus?
Klee was conscripted into the the German forces during World War One and was deeply affected by this. Klee’s method of painting the Angelus Novus was actually invented by the man himself.
What did Walter Benjamin mean by Angelus Novus?
In the ninth thesis of his 1940 essay “ Theses on the Philosophy of History ”, the German critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, who purchased the print in 1921, interprets it this way: A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating.
How does the storm propel Angelus Novus into the future?
The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
4- Death and Fire
Death and Fire, known in German as Tod und Feuer, is an expressionist painting by Paul Klee from 1940. It was one of the last before his death on June 29 of that year
In 1935, Klee began to suffer from scleroderma, which manifested itself in fatigue, skin rashes, difficulty swallowing, shortness of breath, and pain in the joints of the hands
The paintings of this period tended to be simpler and more representative of the suffering he endured “Tod”, the German word for death, is a common motif throughout the painting. It is mostly seen in the features of the face, although the “d” and “t” are rotated. The word can also be seen in the figure’s raised arm as the “T”, the yellow orb as the “O” and the figure’s head (or torso) as the “D”.
The painting also depicts hieroglyphs, an interest of Klee’s during this time, which can also be seen in many of his other paintings from the late 1930s, such as Insula dulcamara and Heroische Rosen. Since 2014, it has been on display at the Zentrum Paul Klee, a museum in Bern, Switzerland, dedicated to the works of Paul Klee.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the masterpiece of Paul Klee?
His Ad Parnassum (1932), one of his largest and most intricately painted canvases, is regarded as his masterpiece and the pinnacle of his pointillist style. In 1933, his final year in Munich, Germany, he created close to 500 pictures.
What is Paul Klee’s most expensive painting?
The most expensive piece of art ever sold in an auction house was a painting by Paul Klee titled Tanzerin. This masterwork was created in 1932.
How many paintings did Paul Klee paint?
Paul Klee produced almost 10,000 paintings and 4,877 drawings during his lifetime. He also experimented with lithography, engraving, watercolor drawing and even music.
5- Cat and Bird
Cat and Bird is a work from 1928. It was made with oil and ink on gessoed canvas mounted on wood. It is currently in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Klee was one of many modernist artists who wanted to practice what he called “the pure cultivation of the media” of painting, that is, to use line, form and color for their own sake and not to describe something visible. That priority allowed him to create images that dealt less with perception than with thought, so that the bird in this painting seems to fly not in front of the cat’s forehead, but inside it: the bird is literally in the cat’s mind
By making the cat all head, Klee concentrates on the thought, the fantasy, the appetite, the cravings of the brain. One of his goals as an artist, he said, was to “make secret visions visible.”
The cat is watchful, frightening, but also calm, and Klee’s palette is also calm, in a narrow range from tawny to pink with areas of blue-green. This and the suggestion of a childlike drawing lighten the mood
Believing that children were close to the wellsprings of creativity, Klee was fascinated by their art, and evokes it here through simple lines and shapes: ovals for the cat’s eyes and pupils (and, more loosely, for the bird’s body), triangles for its ears and nose. And at the tip of that nose is a red heart, a sign of the cat’s desire.
What is Happening in Angelus Novus?
Angelus Novus
| Artist | Paul Klee |
| Date Created | 1920 |
| Medium | Oil on paper laid on board |
| Genre | Expressionism |
| Period | Early 20th Century |
| Dimensions | 31.8 cm × 24.2 cm (12.5 in × 9.5 in) |
| Series / Versions | N/A |
| Where is it housed? | Israel Museum, Jerusalem |
Among Klee’s most mystical works is “Angelus Novas,” made in 1920. In spite of its diminutive size this work of art features a character with wings in some state of distress or wonder, its eyes looking at something invisible. The woman is placed against a stormy background that brings to mind the idea of eddy and disarray with the swirling lines and distracted shapes.
Initially, one might suppose that, “Angelus Novus” is just a picture of an angel. On the other hand, a deeper analysis shows more complexity as well as profound symbolism. The very name of the piece, “Angelus Novus,” conveys the meaning of “New Angel” in Latin, suggesting the coming of some new order, a revolution.
Walter Benjamin, one of the most influential philosophers and critics, figured out the meaning of “Angelus Novus” in his essay “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” He described the angel as a personification representing the level of historical consciousness, which is constantly moving forward toward the future in spite of being confronted with the wreckage of the past. Benjamin’s interpretation provides a philosophical touch to Klee’s painting, suggesting ideas of time, history and human condition.
Who painted Angelus Novus?
Paul Klee
Angelus Novus/Artists
Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus, a 1920 oil transfer drawing with watercolour, is a fearsome but fragile seraph: afloat, aghast, going who knows where. “This,” wrote Walter Benjamin, the philosopher who first owned the monoprint, “is how one pictures the Angel of History.”
What did Benjamin really mean with his angel of history?
The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. According to Scholem, Benjamin felt a mystical identification with the Angelus Novus and incorporated it in his theory of the “angel of history,” a melancholy view of historical process as an unceasing cycle of despair.
What we call progress is this storm?
But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
What is Angel history?
Angels are pure spirits without physical bodies (although angels sometimes appear to and interact with human beings). According to the Bible, angels were created before the material universe and they were present when it was created. (Job 38:1-7 says sons of God (angels) sang for joy when God created our universe.)
Paul Klee, Angelus Novus, and Walter Benjamin Meet
Paul Klee was a young artist when he created Angelus Novus, an angel made with Klee’s self-developed oil transfer technique and watercolour on paper in 1920, not long after the end of World War One. During the war, Klee had been conscripted into the German forces, but he spent much of his service away from the front, allowing him to paint and draw. 1920 was a breakthrough year in Klee’s career. He had his first large-scale exhibition in Munich, which included Angelus Novus, was about to join the Weimar Bauhaus, and came up with his artistic credo “Creative Confession,” which encompassed his metaphysical perception of reality.
In the spring of 1921, Walter Benjamin, the philosopher and critic who was already making a name for himself as a heterodox thinker, bought Angelus Novus for 1000 marks, and hung it in his office in Berlin. He was so taken with the painting that he hung it in every apartment he lived in, writing of the eccentric angel hovering as though caught between moving forwards and backwards: “This is how one pictures the angel of history.” Benjamin was not a systematic thinker, but rather used experiment and contradiction to come to his new ideas. Klee, an unconventional modernist who effortlessly moved between Bauhaus and Surrealism, was not unlike him in this. A great deal of Benjamin’s thinking about art, like his conception of “aura,” a numinous quality of art that becomes lost in the process of mechanical reproduction, was informed by Klee’s paintings and drawings, in particular by Angelus Novus.
6- Twittering Machine
Twittering Machine (Die Zwitscher-Maschine) is a watercolor and oil transfer with ink on paper from 1922
Like other works by Klee, it combines biology and machinery, depicting a group of birds loosely drawn on a wire or branch connected to a crank
Interpretations of the work are varied: it has been perceived as a nightmarish lure for the viewer or a representation of the artist’s helplessness, but also as a triumph of nature over mechanical activities. It has been seen as a visual representation of the mechanics of sound.
Originally exhibited in Germany, the image was declared “degenerate art” by Adolf Hitler in 1933 and sold by the Nazi Party to an art dealer in 1939, from where it reached New York. It is one of the best known of Klee’s more than 9,000 works, and is among the most famous images in New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
It has inspired several musical compositions and, according to a 1987 New York Magazine profile, has been a popular piece to hang in children’s rooms.
3- Fish Magic
Fish Magic is a surrealist painting from 1925. The painting belonged to the collection of Walter and Louise Arensberg before being donated in 1950 to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where it is currently housed.
It looks like a mixture of aquatic, celestial and terrestrial entities. The painting is covered with a delicate surface of black paint, beneath which is a dense layer of multicolored pigments. The colorful figures were scratched and scribbled by Klee on the dark background
A square of muslin was glued to the paint in the center, giving the painting the feeling of a collage. The painting’s dark palette and the fragility of the muslin create a mysterious, inky atmosphere.
According to Ann Temkin, Fish Magic is a masterpiece in which the intellectual and imaginative forces of Klee’s artistic gifts are reconciled, producing a “sense of magic.” In particular, Temkin points to the thin diagonal line extending from the right center of the canvas to the top of the clock tower, writing that the “long line painted from the side seems ready to tear away the muslin square to reveal something underneath.”
10- Highway and Byways
Highway and Byways is an oil painting on canvas. It belongs to the group of his many layered and striped paintings and was created in January 1929 after Klee’s second trip to Egypt
On loan from Werner Vowinckel, it was first exhibited at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne and can now be seen at the Ludwig Museum, also in Cologne.
The title of the painting corresponds to its structure. In the center, runs the straight, contoured main path, divided into several parts, differentiated by color contrasts, which moves mainly between blue-orange and red-green, almost aligned with the center of the painting and narrowing in layers in its horizontal inner structure
The main road is not only a road, but also a “strip of fields splitting 45 times across the high area of the horizon striped with blue and purple”, more like a “painting of the celestial staircase of a step pyramid”
Interesting Facts about “Angelus Novus”
Inspiration from Klee’s Personal Collection: Klee’s inspiration for “Angelus Novus” can be traced back to his personal collection of folk art and religious artifacts, which often featured angelic motifs and mystical symbolism.
Influence of Kabbalistic Thought: Some scholars suggest that Klee’s interest in Kabbalistic thought and Jewish mysticism influenced the spiritual themes present in “Angelus Novus,” adding another layer of interpretation to the work.
Ownership History: “Angelus Novus” has changed hands several times since its creation, eventually finding a permanent home at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where it continues to captivate audiences with its enigmatic presence.
Image description
Angelus Novus is considered one of the early pictures in the group of motifs of angels created by Paul Klee , which includes around fifty works created between 1915 and 1940. In Klee’s own words, these are creatures that are only in the “anteroom of the angelic community”. Its execution is described as a shorthand-style handwriting with the effect of a bubbling, carefree cheerfulness, in which the joke has triumphed over the suffering. What is striking about the drawn figure is the oversized head, the outstretched arms, which only slightly suggest a pair of wings, and the rudimentary legs with three toes reminiscent of birds’ feet. The eyes, nose, the open mouth with visible teeth, ears and the throat are designed. The hair is shown like curly rolled up paper strips and at the same time looks «disheveled by the storm». The figure’s gaze goes out of the picture space and past the viewer.
The drawing is signed and dated lower right. The title Angelus Novus was translated as New Angel by Walter Benjamin . In the context of Paul Klee’s group of motifs, however, he can also be understood as a young angel , an angel that has yet to become.
literature
- Peter Bulthaup (Ed.): Materials on Benjamin’s theses ‘On the concept of history’. Contributions and interpretations. Suhrkamp pocket book science 121, Frankfurt am Main 1975. ISBN 978-3-518-07721-4
- Horst Schwebel : Redierunt angeli — revision of the angel myth? Benjamin’s interpretation of the «Angelus Novus» by Paul Klee. In: Horst Schwebel, Andreas Mertin (ed.): Images and their power. On the relationship between art and the Christian religion. Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-460-32821-5 , pp. 52-65.
- Ester Muchawsky-Schnapper: Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus, Walter Benjamin and Gershom Sholem. In: Israel Museum Journal Spring 1989, pp. 47–52.
- Johann Konrad Eberlein : «Angelus Novus». Paul Klee’s picture and Walter Benjamin’s interpretation. Rombach, Freiburg i. Br. 2006, ISBN 3-7930-9280-1 .
- Otto Karl Werckmeister : Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, or the Transfiguration of the Revolutionary into the Historian. In: Critical Inquiry 22 (1996), No. 2, pp. 239-267.
- Otto Karl Werckmeister: Left Icons. Benjamin, Eisenstein, Picasso — After the fall of communism. Hanser, Munich 1997, ISBN 978-3-446-19136-5 , pp. 25-31.
Paul Klee, Angelus Novus, Canvas Print, Oil Painting Replica and High Resolution Image Download
Angelus Novus represents Klee’s inner demons and fears during a difficult period in his life.
Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus, according to German philosopher Walter Benjamin, who purchased the artwork, «is a monoprint showing an angel fixated on an object and gradually moving away from it.»
Benjamin’s views were what particularly made the artwork famous, but we were not his only owner. He bought it from Klee in 1921 before passing it onto his close friends Theodor W. Adorno and later Gershom Scholem.
According to many experts and philosophers, Paul Klee did what many people imagined as the Angel of History. Klee was conscripted into the German forces during World War I, and this deeply affected him.
Klee’s painting method for Angelus Novus was actually invented by himself. The oil transfer technique (monoprint) involved coating a piece of tracing paper with ink, then placing a drawing paper beneath it, and scratching the top paper with a needle or another sharp object to bring out a copy of the one below.
Angelus Novus shows an angel stuck in a flight motion neither going forward nor backward, eyes glued to a picture of despair, seemingly stunned. There aren’t many paintings like this in the world due to Klee’s creative new technique and also the subject Paul chose to create his artwork.
According to Walter Benjamin while escaping from the Nazis in 1940: «… a Klee painting named Angelus Novus, shows an angel as if about to move away from something he is continuously contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread…This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past… He sees one single catastrophe, ruins upon ruins…A storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress…»
Paul Klee’s art style was partly expressionistic, and it was a style that conveyed significant meaning within its simplicity. The one that arguably resembles Angelus Novus the most is Edvard Munch, another artist who gained a lot of fame with his expressionist style and created the extremely famous painting, The Scream.
As an alternative theory; some new researchers have placed Adolf Hitler as the portrait of Angelus Novus rather than the Angel of History, as many have always claimed. For example, the 2008 exhibition at the Neue National Galerie in Berlin gave the utmost importance to this artwork and boldly presented this theory to its passionate visitors.
Some researchers and theorists from Stanford University provided evidence to support their claims, but most still uphold the original explanation.
Throughout his career, Klee would embrace not only expressionism but also many other art movements such as cubism, futurism, and even more traditional styles during his early development.
9- Angelus Novus
Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus is a work from 1920, showing “an angel, contemplated and fixed on an object, slowly moving away from it,” according to the buyer of the work, German philosopher Walter Benjamin.
It was Benjamin’s opinion of the work that made it especially famous, but he was not the only owner of the work. He bought it from Klee in 1921 before it passed into the hands of those close to him, Theodor W. Adorno and later Gershom Scholem.
According to several experts and philosophers, Paul Klee painted what many imagine to be the Angel of History. Klee was drafted into the German forces during World War I, which affected him deeply.
Klee’s method of painting the Angelus Novus was invented by Klee himself. His oil transfer technique (monoprint) consisted of covering a piece of tracing paper with ink, placing a piece of drawing paper underneath and scratching the upper paper with a needle or other sharp object to make a copy on the lower one.
The Angelus Novus shows a seemingly stunned angel, eyes locked in an image of despair, stuck in a flying motion that neither advances nor recedes. You don’t see many paintings like this in the world, due to the inventiveness of Klee’s new technique and also the subject from which Paul created his work.
1- Insula Dulcamara
Insula dulcamara is an oil painting on newsprint glued to burlap made in 1938, when he was suffering from scleroderma. It is his largest work and is part of the collection of the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern.
Like much of Klee’s output, the image conveys a coded message to the viewer, asking them to reflect on the artist’s thought processes during its creation
The conventional interpretation, based on the fact that the original title of the painting was to be The Island of Calypso, is that the symbols arranged on a plain background represent a desert island with an idol and a passing steamship.
However, a more recent analysis by scholar Chris Pike suggests that the symbols represent Klee’s own identity and mortality, spelling out his name and referencing aspects of his life and interests. From the dotted sign enclosed in the center left, representing “origin,” it is possible to distinguish the letters of the word Paul
The letters of the word Klee are not so obvious, but can be determined with the imagination, especially in comparison with his written signature. The pale face of the letter P may represent his skin tone, a result of his state of health and approaching death. The red spots may represent the berries of the Solanum dulcamara (belladonna) plant mentioned in the title of the work.