A profound study of Paul Klee&;s painting Ad Parnassum, a key work in the painter&;s oeuvre. In the 1920s, German-Swiss artist Paul Klee (1879&;1940) began his long-lasting engagement with polyphonic art&;a multi-voiced way of painting analogous to music. A relentless experimenter, Klee began these studies while teaching at the Bauhaus in Dessau, developed them further during his tenure at the art academy in Düsseldorf, and brought them to a conclusion after his return to Switzerland in 1933. In this book, distinguished art historian Oskar Bätschmann explores Klee&;s seminal painting Ad Parnassum (1932). Painted shortly after the artist&;s departure from the Bauhaus, it symbolizes a new era&;one of Klee&;s own self-discovery. Bätschmann documents how the artist strove for a connection of music to painting in his color hues and in the rhythmic movement of colored dots. Richly illustrated, this book uses Ad Parnassum to place Klee&;s polyphonic understanding of art in an art-historical context and offers insight into the synesthetic thinking that emerged in the art world during his time.
A profound study of Paul Klee's painting Ad Parnassum, a key work in the painter's oeuvre, examining the origins of Klee's search for polyphonic painting analogous to polyphonic music. Text in English and German.