Baroque Centaur (Barocker Kentaur)
1939
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gouache on laid paper
Dimensions
overall: 32.1 x 24 cm (12 5/8 x 9 7/16 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Benjamin and Lillian Hertzberg
Accession Number
2004.140.11
Art Historical Context
Paul Klee’s *Baroque Centaur* (1939) captures the artist’s lifelong fascination with mythology and the fantastical, rendered in his distinctive poetic style. Created just a year before Klee’s death, the small gouache drawing reflects the inventive spirit he maintained even during a period of declining health. Klee, associated with the Bauhaus and earlier Expressionist circles, often blended humor, abstraction, and symbolic imagery, transforming classical subjects like the centaur into something both whimsical and contemplative. Executed in gouache on laid paper, the work highlights the medium...
About the Artist
Paul Klee
Paul Klee (1879–1940) was born in Münchenbuchsee, near Bern, Switzerland, into a family of musicians; his father was a German music teacher and his mother a trained singer. The musical environment of his childhood left permanent traces on his art, informing his lifelong interest in rhythm, counterpoint, and structural variation. He studied painting in Munich from 1898, absorbing the currents of la...