Page 31 - Studio International - July 1966

away with a ceiling-high tapestry rolled up under my with as many as she brought. A large London Gallery
arm. He had said 'Take your pick' from dozens care- told me recently they had held a Klee show in London
lessly rolled up on the floor, and I did. 'It is one of my in 1928 with very low prices and not one was sold.
best,' he had murmured, and added 'I shall write a But now, only eleven years later, I was a different
lower value for you for the douane.' As it happened the audience. If every picture has an empty space through
customs agent in New York discovered that my husband which the spectator enters, Klee's empty spaces had a
had known a hero of his, Frank Swinnerton, the English transformed spectator in me.
novelist, so he let him through without examination. It was pink, all pink, this first Klee of mine. Uneven
But to get back. My young friend took me to his gallery rectangles and oblongs in an uneven design, shaded
and turned the painters from the wall. I was introduced around with brown, a little crooked man at the bottom.
to an unknown world. Bauhaus, Blaue Reiter, Cubists, It was on burlap sacking, the edges uneven, and I felt at
Impressionists, post-Impressionists . . . Macke and Franz home with such homespun material. The frame was
Marc, Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Braque, Dufy, Renoir, grocery boxwood.
Juan Gris. It is a nice way to look at paintings, in a small It hung opposite our bed, Desert settlement, and I gazed
empty gallery, with no one pushing you to buy; just happy and gazed at it. It always held me—it still does. I could
that you like them. look and look, and wonder that I did not tire. But I
I began to look forward to dropping in at this hideout on didn't, and I never have in the almost three decades
the blazing Sunset Strip. since then. Does it supremely satisfy some need for just
Then one day my lanky young man said : 'This time I've this order of things, this arrangement of rectangles,
brought you a Klee, O.K. ?' And he hung it in the bed- oblongs, a little man, and pink and brown? Whatever it
room. was, it created that peculiar delight which great art can
My relation to Klee so far was practically non-existent. bring and which specifically Paul Klee has always in-
In 1928 a woman had come to the art colony-by-the-sea spired in me.
where I then lived, with an exhibition of Die Blau Reiter. A blow fell. My lanky young friend arrived with the
We were used in that colony to very modern music, ultra- news : 'We-ell, you've had this picture for about three
modern design, avant-garde poetry, but the 'latest' in months : it's time I took it back.'
painting had not reached Carmel. I looked at the pic- My picture had become part of me. I was dismayed.
tures, and with the rest of our jeering arty population I'm `Take it back ? But I ... it belongs to ...'
afraid I jeered. Galka Scheyer, the Swiss woman who `It belongs to Miss Price', the young man smiled.
brought them, and an old friend of Klee's, tried to explain How could I keep it longer? There would be such a void
them, but I do not think it made any impact. She left without it. 'Isn't there some way ... ?'

Paul Klee Paul Klee Paul Klee
Irrenhaus (Madhouse) 1915 Nabul oder die höllische Verkehrtheit Dame mit Tieren (Lady with animals) 1922
Ink 8 1/2 x 10 3/4 in. (Nabul or hellish confusion) 1919 Ink 52x 61in.
Ink 112x 8+ in.