Paul Klee

As a child, Paul Klee would sketch without thinking on both the front and back of sheets of paper. As infrared images show, on the back of his reworked childhood drawing Lady in a Sailing Boat (1884) for example, it is possible to make out the image of a Christmas tree rotated 180 degrees.

In around 1910, avant-garde art movements such as the Blaue Reiter lauded children’s drawings and so-called “primitive art” as the origins of artistic creation. In keeping with this spirit, Klee incorporated eighteen of his some 120 childhood drawings into his 1911 catalogue raisonné. Titled, dated, and numbered, they represent the genesis of his artistic practice.

As an adult, Klee reworked his selection of eighteen childhood drawings by cropping them, reconfiguring them, and mounting them onto card. Lady in a Sailing Boat is brought together with the drawing Horse, Sleigh, 2 Ladies (1884) on a single sheet of card. At high speed, the veils of the ladies billow in the wind. Klee appears to have deliberately emphasised movement with this combination.

Just as deliberate is his decision to declare Lady in a Sailing Boat the front side of this particular artwork. In so doing, Klee effectively discards the Christmas tree – one of his favourite motifs as a child.