Paul Klee
The Serpent Goddess and Her Enemy, 1940
Coloured paste on paper on cardboard, 29,6 x 42 cm
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, on loan from a private collection
During his late period at the end of the 1930s, Paul Klee drew prolifically. In some years, he made over 1,000 drawings. He further simplified his means and attempted to focus on the essential in all forms and subjects. His use of line now recalls calligraphy, signs, and hieroglyphics. In “The Serpent Goddess and Her Enemy,” from the year of Klee’s death, three figures meet. There is a snake, whose body “slithers” across the pictorial field from left to right. The head of another serpent-like being with its tongue sticking out can be seen at the top. Below, Klee used a grid to draw a crawling creature resembling a centipede.