.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
Filled with a subtly modulated play of colour and an intriguing sense of space, Kleine Erinnerung an Nymphenburg (Little Souvenir of Nymphenburg) is a jewel-like composition that showcases Paul Klee’s mastery of the watercolour medium. As the title indicates, the present work is a personal memento of the impressive palace architecture of Schloss Nymphenburg, the imposing summer residence of the Bavarian royal family. Located on the western outskirts of Munich and constructed in several phases beginning in 1664, each generation adding their own touch to the building, the palace is an elaborate mixture of Baroque, French Rococo and Neo-Classical design, with extensive formal gardens that stretch over 180 hectares.
Klee would have been well acquainted with this historic landmark, having lived in Munich for over a decade. In the first-half of 1921, he was splitting his time between Weimar, where he had recently been appointed to the teaching staff of the pioneering art school known as the Bauhaus, and his family home and studio in the city’s Schwabing district. Kleine Erinnerung an Nymphenburg may have been executed following one of the artist’s return visits to the city, or during the summer, as the family packed up their apartment and prepared to relocate to Weimar full-time. Here, the different buildings that make up Schloss Nymphenburg appear to float weightlessly within the illusory space of the picture, their forms stacked and overlapping in a manner that both echoes and disrupts the symmetric arrangement of the different wings framing the central pavilion. Though simplified to a series of basic geometric forms, Klee conveys a sense of the grandeur of the palace complex through the scale and detail of each building, picking out the precise proportions of the structures and the banks of windows that mark their facades.
The work is a dynamic example of Klee’s celebrated farbstufungen or colour gradation paintings, delicately hued compositions that use layers of gouache and watercolour paint to generate luminous forms and an internal structural rhythm. Klee described his technique in these works as ‘glazing,’ dividing the sheet into linear bands, which he then covered in layer upon layer of semi-translucent colour wash. In Kleine Erinnerung an Nymphenburg, Klee uses a mixture of blue and red tones, building the vibrancy of the colours by modulating the amount of pigment in each band and alternating the order in which they are applied, allowing some to become predominately pink-hued or a soft blue shade, while others appear to be a delicately balanced mixture of the two, creating purple or violet tones that shift subtly before the eye. These ethereal passages of colour are at their most complex in the array of buildings, where each structure has a different hue from its neighbour. The tones are deftly modulated within their facades, transitioning from deeper colours at the bottom to lighter, almost creamy shades at the top of the building, while the triangular and trapezoid roofs are filled with denser planes of vibrant scarlet pigment.
Together, these soft, delicate colour effects create a romantic vision of the Schloss Nymphenburg, as if Klee has recorded the buildings in the last light of the setting sun, as shadows begin to encroach on the scene. Kleine Erinnerung an Nymphenburg was acquired from Klee by the American artist and designer Dewees Cochran Helbeck in the early 1930s, while she was living in Germany; she brought it with her on her return to New York several years later, and it subsequently entered the collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.
Klee would have been well acquainted with this historic landmark, having lived in Munich for over a decade. In the first-half of 1921, he was splitting his time between Weimar, where he had recently been appointed to the teaching staff of the pioneering art school known as the Bauhaus, and his family home and studio in the city’s Schwabing district. Kleine Erinnerung an Nymphenburg may have been executed following one of the artist’s return visits to the city, or during the summer, as the family packed up their apartment and prepared to relocate to Weimar full-time. Here, the different buildings that make up Schloss Nymphenburg appear to float weightlessly within the illusory space of the picture, their forms stacked and overlapping in a manner that both echoes and disrupts the symmetric arrangement of the different wings framing the central pavilion. Though simplified to a series of basic geometric forms, Klee conveys a sense of the grandeur of the palace complex through the scale and detail of each building, picking out the precise proportions of the structures and the banks of windows that mark their facades.
The work is a dynamic example of Klee’s celebrated farbstufungen or colour gradation paintings, delicately hued compositions that use layers of gouache and watercolour paint to generate luminous forms and an internal structural rhythm. Klee described his technique in these works as ‘glazing,’ dividing the sheet into linear bands, which he then covered in layer upon layer of semi-translucent colour wash. In Kleine Erinnerung an Nymphenburg, Klee uses a mixture of blue and red tones, building the vibrancy of the colours by modulating the amount of pigment in each band and alternating the order in which they are applied, allowing some to become predominately pink-hued or a soft blue shade, while others appear to be a delicately balanced mixture of the two, creating purple or violet tones that shift subtly before the eye. These ethereal passages of colour are at their most complex in the array of buildings, where each structure has a different hue from its neighbour. The tones are deftly modulated within their facades, transitioning from deeper colours at the bottom to lighter, almost creamy shades at the top of the building, while the triangular and trapezoid roofs are filled with denser planes of vibrant scarlet pigment.
Together, these soft, delicate colour effects create a romantic vision of the Schloss Nymphenburg, as if Klee has recorded the buildings in the last light of the setting sun, as shadows begin to encroach on the scene. Kleine Erinnerung an Nymphenburg was acquired from Klee by the American artist and designer Dewees Cochran Helbeck in the early 1930s, while she was living in Germany; she brought it with her on her return to New York several years later, and it subsequently entered the collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.