Locksmith

Locksmith comes from Klee's last year, 1940, and from the strangest burst of work in his life. In 1939, already seriously ill, he produced well over a thousand pieces, more than in any earlier year, as if he were racing the clock. Many, like this one, were made with wallpaper paste mixed with colour, a cheap binder he could spread quickly and thickly. The figure is drawn in a few heavy black strokes that read almost like handwriting, a locksmith reduced to a sign you could pick out across a room. He worked on paper, about half a metre tall. Klee died in June 1940, and pictures like this were among the last things he made.