God of War (1937): Art, History and Details

God of War (1937) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Paul Klee (German, 1879–1940).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This drawing belongs to a series of large format works with bold colors, thick painterly lines, and pictograph formations that Paul Klee created late in his career. The period during which they were made was marked by anxiety for the artist, as political turmoil grew in Europe during the 1930s. To suggest this experience, Klee painted on a sheet of newspaper, allowing the printed text to intermingle with his own sign-like marks. The article visible here, for example, discusses the Spanish civil war. The figures that dominate the work more subtly suggest this crisis, including a large face with heavy eyelids and an enigmatic smile depicted in layers of yellow paint and several dancing or running figures in the foreground delineated by areas left unpainted.

Object facts

• Title: God of War
• Date: 1937
• Creator attribution: Paul Klee (German, 1879–1940)
• Culture: Germany, 20th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Gouache and tempera
• Dimensions: Sheet: 35.2 x 29 cm (13 7/8 x 11 7/16 in.); Secondary Support: 64.6 x 49.3 cm (25 7/16 x 19 7/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - German
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1992.278

A detail from the museum

Shortly before this drawing was made, Paul Klee was exiled from Germany to his native Switzerland due to the political turmoil that led to World War II.

Collection credit

Bequest of Lockwood Thompson

Further reading listed by the museum

• Helfenstein, Josef and Christian Rümelin. Paul Klee: Catalogue Raisonné. Bern: Kunstmuseum Bern, 1998-2004
• Paul Klee: Oeuvres Récentes. Exh. Cat. Paris: Galerie Simon, 1938.
• Paul Klee. Exh. Cat. New York: Buchholz Gallery/Willard Gallery, 1940.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.