1955 After Paul Klee "Diana", First Edition Lithograph

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A stunning vintage First Edition offset lithograph, full-color print, after painting "Diana" (1931) by Paul Klee. Comes from a rare … Read more A stunning vintage First Edition offset lithograph, full-color print, after painting "Diana" (1931) by Paul Klee. Comes from a rare First Limited Edition art folio published in 1955. Signed in the print. Printed on one side. Hand tipped-in on a board of heavy paper. Information regarding the original artwork will be found by lifting the piece. Copy on the back of the board is related to another piece in the folio. Very detailed. Colors are beautiful! Excellent condition - never framed.

Overall 10.80"W x 14.75"H
Image 7"W x 9.35"H

At the end of 1931 Klee arrived at a new, very important concetion which he called "divisionism". He treated colors in the manner of Seurat and Neo-Impressionists, but he did not split them in order to achieve a greater luminosity, not did he arrange them according to what was called "simultaneous contrasts"; instead, he worked with rows of dots of the same color, which he placed on a ground that is only slightly articulated into planes and colours. The result is a kind of coloured, light filled space, a counterpart of the physical space obtained from interlocking planes. Several of Klee's pictures seem to have been waiting for this light-filled space before they came into being, and they too can be classified as "divisionist". Some of these are quiet abstract or, as Klee preferred to call them, "absolute", while others have graphic elements which evoke identifiable objects by way of association.

To the latter group belongs this Diana, done in 1931. The coloured light here has the effect of a "divinatory being", to quote a phrase by the poet Novalis, and it's both a spiritual and a physical phenomenon. This distinction between "within" and "without" is no longer valid, Diana is a fleeing, flying being, her left foot touches a whee; the figure is a structure composed of fluttering forms, the tiny head is of little importance. More important is the arrow which denotes movement, seeing, and apparently also hunting. The dominant, nocturnal green is Diana's home, she moves on it like a planet, for she is, among other thing, a moon goddess. See less