Rare Vintage 1955 Klee "Diana" Offset Lithograph

A beautiful vintage offset lithograph of Diana (1931) by Paul Klee. This lithograph is printed on one side only and hand tipped-in on a sheet of heavy paper.     

Information regarding the original painting can be found by lifting the plate. 

Image: 7" x 9.25" tipped in on heavy paper.

Paul Klee (1879-1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism.

DIANA, 1931

PANEL, Oil; 31½ × 23⅝"

Mrs. Gertrude Lenart, New York

AT THE END OF 1930 Klee arrived at a new, very important conception which he called "divisionism." He treated colors in the manner of Seurat and the Neo-Impressionists, but he did not split them in order to achieve greater luminosity, nor 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 colors. The result is a kind of colored, 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 quite 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 colored light here has the effect of a "divinatory being," to quote a phrase by the poet Novalis, and it is both a spiritual and a physical phenomenon. The distinction between "within" and "without" is no longer valid, Diana is a fleeing, flying being, her left foot touches a wheel; the figure is a structure composed of fluttering forms, the tiny head is of little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 things, a moon goddess.