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šberbr쳌cktes signed 'Klee' (lower left); inscribed '1931 R 13' (upper right); inscribed 'šberbr쳌cktes' (on the reverse) pencil and watercolour on linen on canvas 23 7/8 x 19 7/8in. (60.7 x 50.5cm.) Executed in 1931 PROVENANCE The Artist's Studio, Dessau, Dusseldorf and Bern. Lily Klee, Bern, by whom inherited from the above in 1940. Klee Gesellschaft, Bern, from 1946. Rolf and Catherine E. B쳌rgi, Bern, from 1950. LITERATURE W. Grohmann, Paul Klee, Stuttgart, 1954, pp. 258 & 276. W. Grohmann, Paul Klee, London, 1954, pp. 266 & 284. W. Grohmann, Paul Klee, Geneva, 1969, pp. 258 & 281. K. Schenker, 'Titel-Bild-Gedict. Paul Klee, ' Einst dem Grau der Nacht enttaucht..., 1918.17,' printed in Georges-Bloch-Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Instituts der Universit„t Z쳌rich, Zurich, 1998, p. 152. The Paul Klee Foundation, (ed.), Paul Klee Catalogue Raisonn‚ 1931-1933, Vol. VI, London, 2002, no. 5558, p. 115 (illustrated in colour p. 98). EXHIBITION Bern, Kunsthalle, Ged„chtnisausstellung Paul Klee/Paul Kunz, Bern, Plastik, November - December 1940, no. 30. Basel, Kunsthalle, Ged„chtnisausstellung Paul Klee, February - March 1941, no. 326. Basel, Kunstmuseum, Paul Klee, 1879-1940. Ausstellung aus Schweizer Privatsammlungen, June - August 1950, no. 69. Bern, Kunstmuseum, Paul Klee, Ausstellung in Verbindung mit der Paul Klee-Stiftung, no. 610. Munich, Haus der Kunst, Elan Vital oder das Auge der Eros, May - August 1994, no. 361 (illustrated in colour). Bern, Kunstmuseum, Paul Klee, Die Sammlung B쳌rgi, February - April 2000, no. 114 (illustrated in colour p. 138); this exhibition later traveled to Hamburg, Hamburger Kunstalle. Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery, The Private Klee: Works by Paul Klee from the B쳌rgi Collection, August - October 2000, no. 114, pp. 140, 192, 279 (illustrated in colour p. 138). NOTES šberbr쳌cktes comes from one of those most celebrated Klee collections put together in Switzerland during the artist's lifetime. Until recently it was a central work in the B쳌rgi collection. The B쳌rgis led by the taste of Hanni B쳌rgi assembled a comprehensive collection of 66 works by the artist. Other works in the collection include major Bauhaus works such as Buchstabenbild (1924), Vollmond (1927) and the very bold and impressive Feuer-Quelle of 1938. However, amongst all these major works none is as impressive as šberbr쳌cktes which was de-accessioned from the collection only two years ago. šberbr쳌cktes was executed at a pivotal moment in Klee's career. His major exhibition at Flechtheim had been transferred to New York in 1930 and with Alfred Barr's support, Klee's work was shown in the Museum of Modern Art and heralded not only as avant garde, but as a 'window for a new concept of the world'. Accompanied by this new celebrity in America was new celebrity in Germany where a great number of Klee exhibitions took place in the early 30s. On 1 April 1931, Klee's contract with the Bauhaus in the Dessau formally expired and in October of the same year, he started to teach at the D쳌sseldorf Academy and it was here that he began his experiments into Divisionism. Klee was very specific about calling his new technique Divisioniste rather than Pointillist because he did not want his method to be confused with Seurat's decorative new-Impressionism. Will Grohmann expertly explains Klee's Divisionist concept in his study of the major sister picture Das Lichte und Etlichtes (The light and more besides), 1931 (P.K.5633): 'His aim is not to make colour and light, pigment and spectral colour coincide, nor to make colours mix in the viewers eye, nor to harmonise contrasts or construct space, It is to create light-filled space.' Grohmann goes on to say, 'Preliminary stages of this treatment turn up as early as 1925, so this particular invention was slow to mature. It was only after structural patterns began to attract him for their "stimulation of the mind" that Klee began to create pictures which are nothing but coloured luminous space where the colours are the "actions and passions of light" pictures that are "acts of the universe"'(W. Grohmann, Paul Klee, New York, 1966 p. 124). Nothing in these Divisionist canvases happens by accident. Here for example, extraordinary care has been taken in the application of each mosaic tile onto the washed ground. Every inch provides interesting contrasts and colour balances. The end effect is a tour de force of complexity, balance, light and life. Klee had resolved his composition in a very full and complex drawing executed earlier in the year, carrying the same title ( šberbr쳌cktes, PK.5540). With Klee it is always difficult to assume the exact nature of the subject but there do seem to be obvious possibilities: the uppermost figure seems to be carried in triumph by the people below, could he perhaps be some form of divinity rising above his people and the complex pattern of the universe below him, or could this more simply be an image of the artist triumphantly bridging his career between the Bauhaus and the D쳌sseldorf Academy? The best of Klee's Divisionist pictures have a very heavy antique influence for obvious reasons. During his early years in D쳌sseldorf, he studied Greek tragedy, read Parsifal in the original, the mahabaratta, Buddha's sermons and Mommsen. As a present to himself on his fiftieth birthday, he organised a long trip to Egypt visiting Alexandria, Cairo, Luxor, Karnak, Thebes and Aswan. As Grohmann writes, 'In Egypt Klee found the courage to attain ultimate simplicity, a greatness that very few persons were able to grasp for some time. To him the 5,000 year old culture meant an historical moment in which primal; beginning, present and future merge. Klee's Egyptian pictures were the equivalent in his life's work of Goethe's West-™stlicher Divan ' (W.Grohmann, op. cit. p. 34-35). šberbr쳌cktes, so pure in its execution and so calculated in its effect, sits alongside Ad Parnassum of the Kunstmuseum, Bern, and Das Lichte und Etlichtes of the Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich, as a major purist example of Klee's great Divisionist pictures.