Villa R

Villa R is an oil-on-carton painting from 1919 by the Swiss-born German artist Paul Klee.[1]

Villa R
ArtistPaul Klee
Year1919
Mediumoil on wooden panel
Dimensions26.5 cm × 22.4 cm (10.4 in × 8.8 in)
LocationKunstmuseum Basel, Basel

Description

The work depicts a white villa standing beside a red road winding into the mountains beyond.[2] A full moon is shining yellow overhead.[2] In the foreground is a large capital letter R which appears to be a part of the landscape. The red road forms a diagonal across the painting and a row of green shapes, including the green letter R, form a second intersecting diagonal. The villa is positioned at the intersection.

Title

The significance of the letter R is not revealed in the painting's title, but is believed to stand for Rosa. Klee had seen the Villa Rosa in the early 1900s on his travels through Italy, accompanied by Goethe's travel diary Italian Journey.[3]

Degenerate Art

In 1939 the painting was confiscated from an art gallery in Frankfurt-am-Main by the Nazis as "degenerate art" and sent with other confiscated works in the Degenerate Art auction by the Fischer gallery in the Grand Hotel National in Lucerne, Switzerland. There it was sold to its current owners, the Kunstmuseum Basel.[4]

See also

References
  1. "Paul Klee". Kunstmuseum Basel. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  2. Kreis, Georg (1989). Entartete Kunst für Basel (in German). Basel: Wiese Verlag. pp. 130–133. ISBN 3909158315.
  3. "Villa R". University of Iowa. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  4. "PAUL KLEE UND DIE »ENTARTETE KUNST«". Zentrum Paul Klee. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.