Paul Klee

You're probably surprised to find this anatomical drawing among Paul Klee's works. After all, we associate him with abstraction and bright colours, with stick-like figures and with sketch-like line drawings. But it took several decades and many evolutions before Klee arrived at what we think of as his style. And these anatomical drawings from 1902 and 1903 are a not unimportant step in his journey. In the autumn of 1902, he begins attending anatomy courses for medical students, writing to his fiancée Lily Stumpf:

"Next winter, I could stay in Bern, and I would enrol at the university to learn more anatomy and study it properly, as the physicians do. When I have that, I can do anything, as I am already able to muster a good deal without reference. To be dependent on common and untrained models could degrade the craft of even a dedicated satirist."

Klee begins to draw preserved anatomical specimens at the same time as he starts attending lectures in practical anatomy. He reports on the lectures:

"In anatomy, we attended to the arm for the whole week, for it is the most difficult, in particular the elbow, the forearm and the wrist. The professor has already expended two lectures on it, next Saturday we shall address the hand."

The drawing you see here is an anatomical diagram of the human arm. Klee goes into great detail, using shading to render the plasticity of the muscles. He also notes down the medical names. The sense and the significance of Klee's study of anatomy is revealed in series of etchings called "inventions", which he makes between 1903 and 1905.