
Paul Klee
23 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches
Notes concerning Galka Scheyer:
The political climate and economic turmoil in Germany was of tremendous concern to Scheyer in 1932. With the modest sponsorship of the Oakland Art Gallery, she travelled to Europe to select new works from her “Blue Four” to exhibit in California. Arriving in Paris, she visited Marcel Duchamp and Constantin Brancusi, as well as Giorgio de Chirico and Piet Mondrian. In February of 1933 she travelled to Dessau where she visited Feininger and Klee. By March 1933, the National Socialists were elected to power and Hitler assumed dictatorial control of the government. The Bauhaus was closed in April 1933, and Klee was ousted from his position in Düsseldorf, accused of being a “Galician Jew.” The persecution of the avant garde artists prompted the Blue Four to move in 1933, with Klee immigrating to Switzerland. With a sense of urgency, Scheyer arranged for a shipment of more than 250 works by the Blue Four to Los Angeles, subsequently returning to California via New York and Chicago. Working with an extremely small budget, Scheyer would organise numerous exhibitions for the Blue Four in San Francisco, Oakland, Hollywood and New York enjoying a certain exclusivity. Scheyer left her estate to the Pasadena Art Museum which is now the Norton Simon Museum.
Provenance
Artist's studio, Germany
Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, Paris, France
Galka Scheyer, Hollywood, California (1933-1938)
Karl Nierendorf, New York (acquired from the above in 1938)
Katharine Kuh Gallery, Chicago
William S. Eisendrath, Chicago/Glencoe, Illinois (acquired from the above prior to 1942) Charles R. Eisendrath, Ann Arbor, Michigan (1959 - ca. 2015)
Private collection, Switzerland (acquired from the above)
Exhibitions
Los Angeles, Museum of History, Science, and Art, [divided in 1961 into the Los Angeles County Museum of History andScience and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)) The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Paul Klee
(October 1933), catalogue, no. 139 (not illustrated)
Braunschweig/ New York/ San Francisco/ Hollywood, Gallery Galka Scheyer, 1935
Los Angeles, Hollywood Gallery of Modern Art, Paintings by Paul Klee (31 July - August 1935), travelling to: Oakland, California,Oakland Art Gallery, (1-29 September 1935); San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, (October 1935)
San Francisco/ Hollywood, Gallery Galka Scheyer, 1937
San Francisco Museum of Art, Paul Klee (12 January - 26 February 1937)
Los Angeles, Howard Putzel Gallery, Recent Pictures by Paul Klee (15 November - December 1937), catalogue no. 39 (not
illustrated)
New York, Gallery Galka Scheyer, 1938
New York, Nierendorf Galleries, Paul Klee. A Choice Collection of the Master’s Work (24 October - November 1938),catalogue no. 14 (not illustrated)
New York, Curt Valentin Gallery, Closing Exhibition. Sculpture, Paintings and Drawings (8 June 1955), catalogue no. 58 (notillustrated)
Bern, Switzerland, Kunstmuseum Bern, Die Blaue Vier. Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Klee (5 December 1997 - 1 March 1998) travelling to: Düsseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, (28 March - 28 June 1998) catalogue no. 143, p. 40, illustrated in colourMadrid, Fundación Mapfre, Jawlenski. La Promesse du visage (11 February-9 May 2021) travelling to Marseille, Musée Cantini (11 June -26 September 2021); Roubaix, Musée d’Art et d’Industrie André-Diligent, La Piscine, (6 November 2021- 6 February 2022), catalogue illustrated in colour
Literature
Devree, Howard, "A Reviewer’s Notebook: Of Foreign and Domestic Abstraction - Other Shows on the Art Calendar," The
New York Times (30 October 1938), p. 10X
H.D. "Last Valentin Show," The New York Times (12 June 1955), p. 6X
Helfenstein, Josef and Christian Rümelin, eds. Paul Klee Catalogue Raisonné Volume 6: 1931-1933 (London & New York/
Bern: Thames and Hudson / The Paul Klee Foundation, Museum of Fine Arts, Bern, 2002), no. 5964, p. 275, illustrated; p.
220, illustrated in colour