This melancholy scene appears to take place on a stage, with a curtain drawn back on the left. The dark borders and the small cross to the right of the title are signs of mourning that Klee put on this and several other works of this period, following the death of his mother in March 1921.
Details
- Artist Name: Paul Klee (Swiss, 1879-1940)
- Title: The Gate to Hades
- Date: 1921
- Medium: Watercolor and oil transfer drawing on laid paper, mounted on thin cardboard
- Dimensions: sheet: 10 7/8 x 15 3/8 in. (27.6 x 39.1 cm); mount: 12-1/4 x 16-7/8 in. (31.1 x 42.9 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection
- Accession Number: P.1953.059
- Copyright: © Norton Simon Museum
Object Information
[Stadtsyndicus a.D. Kauth, Berlin, sold 1925 to];
Galka Scheyer;
Pasadena Art Institute, Pasadena, 1953-1954;
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena,1954-1975;
Norton Simon Museum, 1975.
Paul Klee and the Myth
- Munich, Haus der Kunst, to 1999-10-01
The Classical Motif (organized by the Museum of Modern Art)
- Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, 1953-09-15 to 1953-10-06
- Carbondale, to
- Southern Illinois University, to
The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Paul Klee
- New York, Buchholz Gallery, 1944-10-31 to 1944-11-25
Paul Klee: Paintings and Watercolors from the Bauhaus Years 1921-1931
- Des Moines Art Center, 1973-09-18 to 1973-10-28
Paul Klee
- New York, Buchholz and Willard Galleries, 1940-10-09 to 1940-11-02
Paul Klee Memorial Exhibition [organized by MOMA]
- Smith College Museum of Art, 1941-01-01 to 1941-01-22
- Arts Club of Chicago, 1941-01-31 to 1941-02-28
- Portland, Portland Art Museum, 1941-03-10 to 1941-04-09
- San Francisco Museum of Art, 1941-04-14 to 1941-05-05
- Los Angeles, Stendahl Art Galleries, 1941-05-08 to 1941-05-18
- City Art Museum of St. Louis, 1941-05-22 to 1941-06-17
- Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), 1941-06-28 to 1941-07-27
Klee and America
- The Phillips Collection, 2006-06-16 to 2006-09-10
- The Menil Collection, 2006-10-06 to 2007-01-28
The Nineteenth International Exhibition of Watercolors
- Art Institute of Chicago, 1940-04-25 to 1940-05-26
Paul Klee 1879-1940: A Restrospective Exhibition [organized by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Pasadena Art Museum]
- Pasadena, Pasadena Art Museum, 1967-02-21 to 1967-02-04
- San Francisco Museum of Art, 1967-04-13 to 1967-05-14
- Columbus Museum of Art, 1967-05-25 to 1967-06-25
- Cleveland Museum of Art, 1967-07-05 to 1967-08-13
- Kansas City, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, 1967-09-01 to 1967-09-30
- Baltimore Museum of Art, 1967-10-24 to 1967-11-19
- St. Louis, Washington University, Gallery of Art, 1967-12-03 to 1968-01-05
- Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1968-01-15 to 1968-02-15
German Expressionism
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1961-04-25 to 1961-06-04
The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Paul Klee
- California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1931-04-23 to 1931-05-08
The Spirit of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in the New World
- Norton Simon Museum, 1994-11-17 to 1996-01-14
50 years bauhaus
- Stuttgart, Wurttembergischer Kunstverein, 1968-05-05 to 1968-07-28
- Royal Academy of Arts (Great Britain), 1968-09-19 to 1968-10-27
- Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 1968-11-30 to 1969-01-01
- Paris, Musee National d'Art Moderne, 1969-04-01 to 1969-06-22
- Illinois Institute of Technology, 1969-08-25 to 1969-09-26
- Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1969-12-05 to 1970-02-01
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1970-03-16 to 1970-04-26
- Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1970 to 1971
- Tokyo, National Museum of Modern Art, 1971 to 1971
30 Years of Painting, Water Colors, Drawings and Lithographs by Paul Klee
- Modern Institute of Art (Beverly Hills, California), 1948-09-03 to 1948-10-06
The Galka E. Scheyer Collection
- Mills College Art Gallery, 1961-01-10 to 1961-02-19
Klee, Kandinsky, Jawlensky: Works from the Bauhaus Period
- School of Art Gallery, The Ohio State University, 1966-11-11 to 1966-11-30
Paul Klee
- Norton Simon Museum, 1986-06-05 to 1987-06-28
Contemporary German Watercolor Painting
- California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1936-06-06 to 1936-08-01
The Art of Paul Klee
- Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1960-04-12 to 1960-05-08
Paul Klee: Fifty Paintings, Drawings and Prints from the Galka E. Scheyer Collection
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1959-10-24 to 1959-12-06
- Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, University Gallery, 1960-01-04 to 1960-02-08
- Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, 1960-03 to 1960-04
Bauhaus Painters; Spirit of Modernism: Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Oskar Schlemmer, Alexander Archipenko, Alexei Jawlensky and Others
- Seoul, Ho-Am Art Museum, 1996-02-08 to 1996-04-28
The Galka Scheyer Collection: Klee, Nolde, Jawlensky, Moholy-Nagy, Schmidt-Rottluff, Schwitters, Archipenko, Kandinsky, Lissitzky, Feininger, Kirchner, Dix_1
- La Jolla, Art Center in La Jolla, 1960-07-05 to 1960-08-14
Permanent and Loan Collection, 1973
- Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1973-01-30 to 1973-12-31
My Four Kings: Galka Scheyer and the Blue Four
- Norton Simon Museum, 2002-12-13 to 2003-04-14
- Haas, Robert B., Du, p. 49
- Paul Klee, p. 12
- Geelhaar, Christian, Paul Klee and the Bauhaus, 1973, p. 106
- The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection, Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena, 1976, no. 264 pp. 105-106
- Rosenthal, Mark, Paul Klee and the Arrow, 1979, p. 67
- Paul Klee Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 3, 1919-1922, 1999, no. 2620
- Munchner Moderne: Kunst und Architektur der Zwanziger Jahre, 2001, fig. 6 p. 141
- Barnett, Vivian Endicott, The Blue Four Collection at the Norton Simon Museum, 2002, no. 310 pp. 281-282
- Grohmann, Will, Paul Klee, 2003, p. 28
Additional Artwork by Artist
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