id: 156571 accession number: 1992.278 share license status: Copyrighted url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1992.278 updated: 2022-01-07 22:53:16.581000 God of War, 1937. Paul Klee (German, 1879-1940). Gouache and tempera; sheet: 35.2 x 29 cm (13 7/8 x 11 7/16 in.); secondary support: 64.6 x 49.3 cm (25 7/16 x 19 7/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Lockwood Thompson 1992.278 title: God of War title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1937 creation date earliest: 1937 creation date latest: 1937 current location: creditline: Bequest of Lockwood Thompson copyright: --- culture: Germany, 20th century technique: Gouache and tempera department: Drawings collection: DR - German type: Drawing find spot: catalogue raisonne: Helfenstein and Rümelin 6961 --- CREATORS * Paul Klee (German, 1879-1940) - artist --- measurements: Sheet: 35.2 x 29 cm (13 7/8 x 11 7/16 in.); Secondary Support: 64.6 x 49.3 cm (25 7/16 x 19 7/16 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: description: newspaper tipped onto cream(3) wove paper (artist's mount) watermarks: inscriptions: inscription: signed, upper left, in paint: Klee; secondary support, by artist, lower center, in brown ink: 1937 K. 5. Kriegs Gott ["37 K. 5. Kriegs Gott" underlined in graphite]; lower center, in graphite: III; verso of secondary support, upper left, in graphite: Nos 39 31 / 35 x 29 [all circled]; upper left, on separately applied label: [upper portion cropped] / 1937 [inscribed in blue ink] No [printed in black ink] 0843 [stamped in blue ink] / Paul Klee / Dieu de la Guerre / 35 x 29 [last three lines inscribed in blue ink] / Photo No [printed in black ink] translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Selected Acquisitions opening date: 1993-02-09T05:00:00 Selected Acquisitions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 9-April 11, 1993). title: Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 2000-08-27T00:00:00 Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * Exhibition of Expressionism and Related Movements. Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (January 25 - February 28, 1939). * Paul Klee: Memorial Exhibition. Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA (1941); Arts Club of Chicago (1940); Portland Art Museum, Oregon (1941); San Francisco Museum of Art (April 14 - May 5, 1941); Stendahl Art Galleries, Los Angeles (May 8 - May 18, 1941); City Art Museum, St. Louis (1941); Wellesley College, MA (1941); Museum of Modern Art, New York (1941). * Paul Klee. Buchholz Gallery/Willard Gallery, New York (October 9 - November 2, 1940). * Paul Klee: Oeuvres Récentes. Galerie Simon, Paris (January 24 - February 5, 1938). --- PROVENANCE (Galerie Jeanne Bucher-Myrbor, Paris, sold to Lockwood Thompson) date: September 14, 1938 footnotes: citations: Lockwood Thompson [1901-1992], Cleveland, OH, bequest to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 1938-1992 footnotes: citations: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 1992- footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: Shortly before this drawing was made, Paul Klee was exiled from Germany to his native Switzerland due to the political turmoil that led to World War II. digital description: This drawing belongs to a series of large format works with bold colors, thick painterly lines, and pictograph formations that Paul Klee created late in his career. The period during which they were made was marked by anxiety for the artist, as political turmoil grew in Europe during the 1930s. To suggest this experience, Klee painted on a sheet of newspaper, allowing the printed text to intermingle with his own sign-like marks. The article visible here, for example, discusses the Spanish civil war. The figures that dominate the work more subtly suggest this crisis, including a large face with heavy eyelids and an enigmatic smile depicted in layers of yellow paint and several dancing or running figures in the foreground delineated by areas left unpainted. wall description: This drawing stands as a rare political statement in the art of Paul Klee. He had experimented earlier with the formal potential of the swastika, but the symbol had gained political meaning by 1937, when he used it as the basis for the three running figures at the bottom of God of War. Four years earlier, the artist had been exiled from Germany to his native Switzerland, and in 1937 the Nazi government included works by Klee in its exhibition condemning modernism, called "Degenerate Art." In God of War Klee expressed his concerns through his characteristic lyrical sign making. The principal figure suggests a benevolent Great Sphinx sitting with upraised tail and marked with hieroglyphs. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Helfenstein, Josef and Christian Rümelin. Paul Klee: Catalogue Raisonné. Bern: Kunstmuseum Bern, 1998-2004 page number: Mentioned and reproduced: vol. 7, no. 6961 url: Paul Klee: Oeuvres Récentes. Exh. Cat. Paris: Galerie Simon, 1938.
 page number: Mentioned: no. 34 url: Paul Klee. Exh. Cat. New York: Buchholz Gallery/Willard Gallery, 1940. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: no. 86 url: Vishny, Michèle. "Paul Klee and War: A Stance of Aloofness." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 92 (December 1978): 233-243 page number: Mentioned: p. 241 url: Kersten, Wolfgang. Paul Klee, Übermut: Allegorie der künstlerischen Existenz. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1990. page number: Mentioned: pp. 60-61; Reproduced: p. 63 url: "The Year in Review for 1992." Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (February 1987): 39-72. page number: Mentioned: p. 72, no. 230; Reproduced: p. 62 url: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25161388 Kersten, Wolfgang and Osamu Okuda. Paul Klee: Im Zeichen der Teilung. Exh. Cat. Düsseldorf: Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1995. page number: Mentioned: pp. 214-215 url: Francis, Henry S. "Exhibition of Expressionism and Related Movements." Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 26, no. 2 (February 1939): 19. page number: Mentioned: p. 19 url: DeLamater, Peg. "Klee and India: Krishna Themes in the Art of Paul Klee." PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1991. page number: Mentioned: p. 245 url: DeGrazia, Diane, and Carter E. Foster. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Exh. Cat. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2000. page number: Mentioned: p. 11, pp. 260-261, 298; Reproduced: p. 261 url: Uhde-Stahl, Brigitte. Paul Klees geheime Symbolik. Berlin : Gebr. Mann Verlag, [2018] page number: Reproduced: p. 264; mentioned: pp. 335-337 url: --- IMAGES