Paul Klee Der Held mit dem Flügel (The Hero with the Wing) from the series Inventions (Inventionen) 1905

  • Not on view

This etching depicts a man who was born with one wing. In his incessant attempts to fly, he has broken his other limbs—a fact elucidated in writing next to the figure. With his solemn, statuesque pose and asymmetrical, ruined state—replete with a sprouting tree trunk for a leg—the figure is tragicomic. This work was executed during the flight craze of the early twentieth–century, two years after the Wright brothers' successful flight in 1903. Klee looked upon man's desire to fly with skeptical sarcasm, yet, in terms of his ideas, the identified himself as "a flying Man."

Gallery label from 2006.
Medium
Etching and drypoint
Dimensions
plate: 10 x 6 1/4" (25.4 x 15.9 cm); sheet: 16 x 12 1/16" (40.7 x 30.7 cm)
Publisher
Paul Klee, Bern
Printer
Max Girardet, Bern
Edition
approx. 30
Credit
Purchase
Object number
182.1942
Copyright
© 2023 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Department
Drawings and Prints

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J.B. Neumann, New York; to The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1942

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