Rare Vintage 1955 Klee "Oriental-Sweet" Offset Lithograph

A beautiful vintage offset lithograph of Oriental-Sweet (1938) 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: 9.25" x 7" 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.

ORIENTAL-SWEET 1938

PANEL, OIL; 19⅝ × 26"

Miss Jane Sabersky, New York

IN 1937 KLEE INVENTED a schema which recurs until his death in the most varied applications and forms of expression - the schema of bar strokes.

These strokes can be thin or thick, continuous or discontinuous, bare or shaded. They can be menacing and deadly, but are not necessarily so; their character is determined by the context.

In Oriental-Sweet the assertiveness of the heavy strokes is softened by the carpet of colors in the style of the "magic square" pictures, on which the black signs are placed. The colors are mottled, suggestive of North Africa, luminous and cheerful. The bars are traced along the borders of the colored planes or cut across them. The pyramidal form, the palms, the figure of the Arab, the waxing half moon are as effective as the words of a quatrain, expressing a great richness of meaning in austere form. The strokes are differentiated in length, shape, and in relation to the colored rectangles and gradations of primary and secondary colors.

Like the "Kairouan" water colors, Oriental-Sweet evokes the East. The silvery moon, which was always to accompany Klee, is in the sky here as it was then, but the tender, sweet images of Tunisia have become transformed into severe, monumental forms.