| Ad Parnassum | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Paul Klee |
| Year | 1932 |
| Medium | oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 100 cm× 126 cm(39 in× 50 in) |
| Location | Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern |
Ad Parnassum is a pointillist painting by Swiss-born artist Paul Klee. The painting is currently in the Kunstmuseum Bern.
It was created while Klee was teaching at the Dusseldorf Academy following his trip to Egypt three years prior. The painting process consisted of first applying large squares of muted color on unprimed canvas. Klee then stamped on smaller squares, first in white and then in other diluted colors. The composition is dominated by the shape of a pyramid outlined with stamped lines. The structure could also be interpreted as the roof of a house or a mountain and was likely inspired by the Egyptian pyramids, the Niesen that overlooks Lake Thun in the artist's home country, and the titular Mount Parnassus. Above the pyramid to the right is a bright orange circle that represents the Sun. [1] [2]
Ad Parnassum was painted during a turning point in Klee's artistic style and is now considered a masterpiece in pointillism. An exhibition celebrating the work was presented at the Zentrum Paul Klee from June 2007 to May 2008. [3]
Paul Klee was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored color theory, writing about it extensively; his lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory, published in English as the Paul Klee Notebooks, are held to be as important for modern art as Leonardo da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting was for the Renaissance. He and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture in Germany. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.
The Latin phrase gradus ad Parnassum means "steps to Parnassus". It is sometimes shortened to gradus. The name Parnassus was used to denote the loftiest part of a mountain range in central Greece, a few kilometres north of Delphi, of which the two summits, in Classical times, were called Tithorea and Lycoreia. In Greek mythology, one of the peaks was sacred to Apollo and the nine Muses, the inspiring deities of the arts, and the other to Dionysus. The phrase has often been used to refer to various books of instruction, or guides, in which gradual progress in literature, language instruction, music, or the arts in general, is sought.
The Zentrum Paul Klee is a museum dedicated to the artist Paul Klee, located in Bern, Switzerland and designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. It features about 40 percent of Paul Klee's entire pictorial oeuvre.
The Niesen is a mountain peak of the Bernese Alps in the Canton of Bern, Switzerland. The summit of the mountain is 2,362 metres (7,749 ft) in elevation.
Kaspar Zehnder is a Swiss conductor and flutist. He studied classical languages at the Lyceum in Bern and music at the University of the Arts Bern. His music teachers included Heidi Indermühle (flute), Ewald Körner (conducting), Agathe Rytz-Jaggi (piano) and Peter Streiff and Arthur Furer. He further took conducting master classes with Ralf Weikert, Werner-Andreas Albert and Horst Stein. He also studied chamber music and was a member of the Mozart European Academy, where his main mentor was Aurèle Nicolet.
Paul Klee Notebooks is a two-volume work by the Swiss-born artist Paul Klee that collects his lectures at the Bauhaus schools in 1920s Germany and his other main essays on modern art. These works are considered so important for understanding modern art that they are compared to the importance that Leonardo's A Treatise on Painting had for Renaissance. Herbert Read called the collection "the most complete presentation of the principles of design ever made by a modern artist – it constitutes the Principia Aesthetica of a new era of art, in which Klee occupies a position comparable to Newton's in the realm of physics."
Catherine Gfeller is a Swiss artist. She currently lives and works in Paris and Southern France after having lived in New York from 1995 to 1999.
Ab ovo is a 1917 painting by Paul Klee (1879–1940) made during his time in the German Army. It is noteworthy for its sophisticated technique. It employs watercolor on gauze and paper with a chalk ground, which produces a rich texture of triangular, circular, and crescent patterns.
Death and Fire, known in German as Tod und Feuer, is a 1940 expressionist painting by Paul Klee.
Thomas Kovachevich is an American contemporary visual artist and physician. Kovachevich's art practice is multi-faceted; exhibitions of paintings, sculptures, installations and performances have represented the lexicon of this artist.
Lex Brown is an American video and performance artist. Brown's performance work deals with self-reflection, politics, and design. Brown has shown work at the New Museum, The Kitchen, The High Line, Socrates Sculpture Park and International Center for Photography in New York City, the Antenna Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana, and VIA Music Festival in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as part of their Women in Sound series.
Limits of Reason is a 1927 painting by Paul Klee (1879-1940). It is in the permanent collection of the Pinakothek der Moderne—Pinakothek of modern art—in central Munich's Kunstareal.
Senecio or Head of a Man Going Senile is a 1922 Cubist painting by Swiss artist Paul Klee. It is currently in the Kunstmuseum Basel.
Villa R is an oil-on-carton painting from 1919 by the Swiss-born German artist Paul Klee.
Insula dulcamara is an oil painting on newsprint pasted to burlap by the Swiss-based abstract artist Paul Klee, completed in 1938 when he was suffering from the wasting disease scleroderma. It is his largest work and part of the collection of the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern.
Jaq Chartier is an American visual artist. Chartier gained recognition for her Testing series, abstract paintings that are also active visual records of Chartier's tests of her materials - how they migrate and change in reaction to each other, sunlight, and the passage of time.
The Donkey Rider is a watercolor created in 1914 by the German Expressionist painter August Macke. It was created during the art-historically significant trip to Tunisia that he took with fellow painters Paul Klee and Louis Moilliet in April 1914. The watercolor is now in the collection of the August-Macke-Haus in Bonn.
Highway and Byways is an oil on canvas painting by German artist Paul Klee. It belongs to the group of his numerous layer and stripe paintings and was created in January 1929 after Klee's second trip to Egypt. On loan from Werner Vowinckel, it was first exhibited in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne and can now be seen in the Museum Ludwig, also in Cologne.
Media related to Ad Parnassum at Wikimedia Commons