Art, // March 31, 2018
Paul Klee – “Head of Man” 1922
Paul Klee never visited the United States, but he played an important role in American art in the 1930s and ’40s. Exhibitions and reproductions of his work, and later translations of his writings, gave American artists permission to do things that weren’t in the shadow of Picasso or Matisse. He seemed a genial figure, and his work was, too, and American artists admired his particular mix of spontaneity and discipline. Klee, it seemed, offered a wealth of visual inspiration, and a way forward, without demanding that anyone wear the straitjacket of a particular style.
