Dynamisch-statischer Conflict

Klee's connection with the Bauhaus from 1920-35 is reflected in the precise, constructivist style of this drawing. The bizarre, whirring, machine-like figures take cues from Picabia and other artists' images of industrialized objects. In a famous lecture presented in Jena, one year before this drawing was executed, Klee discussed the interactions of "static and dynamic parts of a pictorial mechanism," a pair of binary oppositions which were part of a larger philosophy that informed his work. Klee's artistic forms resulted from his dynamic processes and revealing or "making visible," as he put it, the inner meanings and structures of the natural world.