“In Engelshut” or “In Angel’s Care” by Paul Klee, 1931
Kagey Art Thoughts 17:
It’s Paul Klee again, and it’s also another example of art that I could totally make if I wanted to but didn’t.
This is, in fact, probably the simplest of all the artworks I’ve saved in my “artthoughts” folder. If you count very carefully, you can see a total of four shapes--not counting the three pairs of what look like eyes--that are all different colors.
Considering the title, it seems fair to suppose that this is a drawing of either two people and an angel, or a person with two heads and an angel. Here the blue and black lines represent the person/people, and the red and brown lines represent the angel. It’s also possible that the blue and red lines are reversed in meaning, and this is a drawing of a two-headed angel and a one-headed person.
I couldn’t tell you exactly why I like this piece of art. In most cases, artwork this simplistic would be the sort of thing I ignore, even allowing for the fact that I do like some simplistic art. Maybe it’s just that it very strongly captures the way a young child might draw in my imagining, and I’ve always had a soft spot for children’s drawings. This, of course, was not drawn by a child. Klee was in his early fifties when he drew this, as far as I can tell.