Extended information about this artwork
Publication History
- The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Paul Klee: A Retrospective Exhibition, exh. cat. (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1967).
- Kunsthalle, Paul Klee, exh. cat. (Cologne: Kunsthalle, 1979).
- The Museum of Modern Art, Paul Klee, exh. cat. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1987).
- Kunstmuseum, Paul Klee, exh. cat. (Berne: Kunstmuseum, 1987).
- Mark Roskill, Klee, Kandinsky, and the Thought of their Time: A Critical Perspective (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992).
- Museum Folkwang, Bauhaus: Dessau – Chicago – New York, exh. cat. (Essen: Museum Folkwang, 2000).
Exhibition History
- New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Paul Klee: A Retrospective Exhibition, February 17-June 30, 1967.
- Cologne, Kunsthalle, Paul Klee, 1979.
- New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Paul Klee, February 4-May 5 1987; traveled to The Cleveland Museum of Art, June 10-August 1987.
- Berne, Kunstmuseum, Paul Klee, September–December 1987.
- Essen, Museum Folkwang, Bauhaus: Dessau – Chicago – New York, August 11-November 12, 2000.
Provenance
Galerie Leiris, Paris. Sold to Berggruen & Cie., Paris, by June 24, 1954; sold to Richard Zeisler, New York, June 24, 1954 .
Who is Paul Klee?
Paul Klee, 1911 by Alexander Eliasberg (Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain)
Paul Klee (1879-1940) was a Swiss-born artist. Involved with and influenced by several different movements—including Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism—Klee excelled in a range of genres, including drawing, printmaking, and, most famously, painting. Similarly, he inventively employed unexpected materials to produce mixed-media works, from canvas and cardboard to foil and fabric.
His avant-garde approach to art landed him a teaching job at the famous Bauhaus School. As he led bookbinding, stained glass, and mural painting workshops, it is during this 10-year teaching stint that he developed a signature painting technique. “He started every picture with an abstract mark—a square, a triangle, a circle, a line or a dot—and then allowed that motif to evolve or grow, almost like a living organism,” explains art historian Richard Dorment.
Fish Magic, 1925 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain)
Dorment is not the only one who viewed Klee’s paintings as sentient beings. In fact, Klee himself made the comparison. “Pictures have their skeleton, muscles, and skin like human beings,” he explained in 1908. “One may speak of the specific anatomy of the picture. A picture representing ‘a naked person’ must not be created by the laws of human anatomy, but only by those of compositional anatomy.”
While Klee had an anatomical approach to composition, the content of his works was inspired by an entirely different discipline: music.
Musical Background
Like many famous fine artists, Klee was born into a creative family. Unlike most of his peers, however, Klee’s parents were not experts in painting, drawing, or sculpting; instead, they were musically-inclined. Specifically, his father was a music teacher, while his mother was a singer.
Klee, at first, followed in his parents’ footsteps. As a young child, he developed a taste for classical music, with works by composers like Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart among his favorite pieces. At the age of 7, he began playing the violin, culminating in a stint as a violinist for the Bern Symphony Orchestra while he was in his 20s.
Though on a promising path, Klee decided to forego a musical career and instead pursue art by the turn of the century—though music would remain an important muse for much of his career. In 1905, nearly a decade after changing career paths, he revealed: “More and more parallels between music and graphic art force themselves upon my consciousness.”
This enduring connection to his earliest craft manifests as paintings that directly reference music. In In the Style of Bach (1919), for example, Klee reimagines a musical score as an arrangement of graphic symbols like foliage, a crescent moon, and stars. In addition to deciphering the structural similarities between music and art, however, Klee discovered a more profound connection between the disciplines when he began to explore color theory.
About this artwork
Currently Off View
Modern Art
Paul Klee
Still Life with Fragments
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
Made 1925
Oil and watercolor on cardboard
43.1 × 72.4 cm (17 × 28 1/2 in.)
Bequest of Richard S. Zeisler
2007.278
2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Publication History
- The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Paul Klee: A Retrospective Exhibition, exh. cat. (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1967).
- Kunsthalle, Paul Klee, exh. cat. (Cologne: Kunsthalle, 1979).
- The Museum of Modern Art, Paul Klee, exh. cat. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1987).
- Kunstmuseum, Paul Klee, exh. cat. (Berne: Kunstmuseum, 1987).
- Mark Roskill, Klee, Kandinsky, and the Thought of their Time: A Critical Perspective (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992).
- Museum Folkwang, Bauhaus: Dessau – Chicago – New York, exh. cat. (Essen: Museum Folkwang, 2000).
Exhibition History
- New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Paul Klee: A Retrospective Exhibition, February 17-June 30, 1967.
- Cologne, Kunsthalle, Paul Klee, 1979.
- New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Paul Klee, February 4-May 5 1987; traveled to The Cleveland Museum of Art, June 10-August 1987.
- Berne, Kunstmuseum, Paul Klee, September–December 1987.
- Essen, Museum Folkwang, Bauhaus: Dessau – Chicago – New York, August 11-November 12, 2000.
Provenance
Galerie Leiris, Paris. Sold to Berggruen & Cie., Paris, by June 24, 1954; sold to Richard Zeisler, New York, June 24, 1954 .
Color Theory
Ad Parnassum, 1932 (Photo: Wiki Art Commons Public Domain)
In 1914, Klee traveled to Tunisia. Inspired by the vibrancy of the sights that surrounded him, it is here that he made his biggest artistic breakthrough: an appreciation for color. “Color has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it, I know that it has hold of me forever,” he said. “Color and I are one. I am a painter.”
Inspired by this revelation, he obsessively studied and tinkered with color for several years. While employed by the Bauhaus, he “developed his own color theory based on a six-part rainbow shaped into a color wheel,” Bauhaus100 explains. “He placed the complementary colors in relation to movements that interact with one another, which shows this theory is based on dynamic transitions.”
It is when Klee mixed his unique approach to color with his musical background that he was able to establish a style that was entirely his own. Some of his works—like Polyphony (1932), a painting that explores musical texture through tonal blocks, and Harmony in Blue-Orange (1923), a piece that pairs complimentary colors as if they were music notes—directly allude to both elements. However, many of his most famous pieces—including Fish Magic (1925) and To the Parnassus (1932)—demonstrate his harmonious approach to color theory without specific references, proving his ability to “improvise freely on the keyboard of colors.”
Death and Fire – More Than a Mood
Abstract expressionist Paul Klee painted Death and Fire as a moody masterpiece. But it’s so much more than a mood. It’s a canvas on fire with deep thoughts, mysteries, and skillful techniques. The smudge and clarity combo makes this work feel like a demon child’s sidewalk chalk drawing. Klee frames it for us twice with his thick and smudgy straight black lines. These ground the work with a stick figure resonance. It’s so familiar …yet still enigmatic.
It works on us with an eerie glow. A muddy green colors the skull’s body. Green often symbolizes life. That’s why this green’s drained down to nearly nothing. It’s almost grey. This moody green/grey straddles color and shadow the same way the work lies between life and death. All the colors in this piece seem more chalky than painterly. This gives Death and Fire an ephemeral resonance to remind us of the impermanence of life.
My favorite part of the painting sits at the top like a crown upon the skull. Three prongs lie dead center in the blazing red of World War II. This stick trinity’s next to the glowing yellow circle – a sun and circle of life. The lines reflect that idea by representing birth, life, and death – the big three. These prongs are the definition of profound simplicity. It doesn’t get more basic than a black line. At the same time a simple dash can communicate everything. That’s how morse code works. In fact, this painting speaks to us in code too. It’s a master work that shouts SOS – a cry for help in the face of war, death, and the pain of being human.
Klee Today
Today, Klee is known as a master of both modernist color and form. In recent years, his exceptional oeuvre has been the subject of much study, culminating in highly-anticipated exhibitions around the world. Notable retrospectives include Paul Klee. Irony at Work at Paris’ Pompidou Center and Paul Klee — Making Visible at the Tate Modern in London.
In addition to museums, Klee’s legacy can be found in the classroom. In the middle of the 20th century, his Bauhaus lectures were compiled into a two-volume tome and published as Writings on Form and Design Theory and, later, as The Paul Klee Notebooks. Likened to Leonardo’s A Treatise on Painting and described by famed art historian Herbert Read as “the most complete presentation of the principles of design ever made by a modern artist,” The Paul Klee Notebooks remain a crucial resource for contemporary creatives—in the fine arts and beyond.
Death and Fire – FAQs
When and where did Paul Klee paint Death and Fire?
In 1940 Swiss Painter, Paul Klee painted Death and Fire to reflect the tragedies of World War II. Before the war he was a delightful and prolific painter. Because of the war, Klee fled Germany, where he’d been teaching. He then returned to his native Switzerland and painted this masterpiece.
Why did Paul Klee paint Death and Fire?
At the time of this work, Klee suffered agonizing pain with scleroderma. He was sixty one, not that old – but still near death. His suffering wasn’t only physical. The horrors of WWII tormented him. Many art historians believe he painted Death and Fire to foreshadow his death. It’s clear he also felt great pain while painting it.
Where can I see Death and Fire in person?
You can see 40% of Paul Klee’s work at the Zentrum Paul Klee. Death and Fire‘s included in this museum’s vast Klee collection. It’s dedicated to the artist and located in Bern, Switzerland at Monument im Fruchtland 3, 3000.
What letters are inside the white skull of Death and Fire?
Paul Klee was teaching art in Germany right before he painted Death and Fire. That’s why it contains the letters TOD. This spells the word for death in German tod. At the time of the painting, Klee loved hieroglyphics. So, he included many representational elements like this into his work.