Der Komiker

Around 1903 Klee was in his mid-twenties, back in his home city of Bern after studying in Munich and Italy, and privately discouraged. Painting was not going well, so he turned to the etching needle, where the discipline of the line suited him. This grotesque head belongs to a set of small etchings he called his Inventions, the first works he was willing to claim as his own. The comedian wears a mask that has half-merged with the face beneath it, both of them pulled out of shape. Klee explained the idea plainly: the mask stands for art, and behind it hides the man. The prints borrow from ancient Greek comedy, where actors performed behind fixed masks, though nothing here is played for an easy laugh. He was still years away from the colour that later made his name, working only in bitten black line on white.