Evening star., 1950-03-12
News Of Art and Artists
March Gallery
Offerings Suit
Most Any Taste
BY Florence S. Berrymon

A<NA1Ao4O1oLlo W oo1U C11l
tastes give March's gallery Offer
ings in Washington much variety.
Conservatives will be pleased to
see selection from the William
T. Evans collection emphasized by
placement as a special show in
the foyer of the National Museum,
also the display at the National
Gallery of American paintings
from its own collections; and the
comprehensive memorial retro
spectiye of Mathilde M. Leisen-
rings paintings and drawings at
the Corcoran Gallery. The Klee
exhibition at the Phillips Gallery
and the Hallmark Art Awards at
the Corcoran offer plenty for the
enjoyment of esthetic radicals.
X n 4
Inspired Prolificocy'
Seven art museums collaborated
to bring to the United States an
exhibition of work by Paul Klee
from the Klee Foundation in
Berne. Switzerland. The show,
augmented by loans from Ameri-
can collections. opened in Janu-
ary at the Museum of Modern
Art, New York. is now at the Phil
lips Memorial Gallery through
April 10, and thereafter will
travel across the continent, max
Ing stops in the museums of Gin
cinnati, Detroit, st. Louis, Port
land. Greg, and San Francisco.
Comprising more than 200
paintings. drawings and prints,
this largest Klee show yet seen in
the United States. fills all of the
temporary exhibition space at the
Phillips Gallery, and it's size and
Importance make it the Gallery's
major Offering for the season, out
ranking the Villon-F Feininger show
there in December.
But 1t will be difficult for many
visitors to see it as epochal. Klee's
work inspires initiates to rhapso-
die enthusiasm, while it strikes
others as nonsensical doodling.
klee had unbounded imagination,
and very early abandoned per-
spective, nationality and resem-
blance, to paint and draw abstract
mysteries influenced by the art Of
children, of primitive tribes, of
things seen and remembered, and
host of other sources.
At first glance, Klee's work ap-
pears to be the output of an i'm
aginatiVe and methodical child.
However, even the casual visitor
must be impressed by the great
variety in this exhibition. No
child could execute intricate laby-
rinths of line, then turn to
sophisticated geometrical designs,
again to primitive pattern in
uninhibited colors and continue
along ever-new trails. Persons
with soaring imaginations will fol-
low Klee's linear complexities with
ease and delight. A much larger
number of visitors u suspect will
comprehend them Gf at alb only
after heavy expenditures of pa
thence and willingness. The lyrical
appreciation of Klee by James
Thrall Soby which introduces the
lavishly illustrated catalogue of the
show, bears witness to the delights
which await those who find the
key to Klee. But a good many
OF us who are willing to concede
the cultural value of laboriously
learning Greek in order to read
Arlstophanes in the original, nev-
ertheless leave these rarifled ac-
complishments to others and use
our all-too-little time for the culti-
vation of pleasures which require
less intellectual elbow-grease.
The exhibition embraces Klees
entire career, from 1898 to his
death in 1910. Paintings and
drawings of the late nineties are
as meticulously traditional as one
could desire. A group of etch-
ings dated 1901 to '05 are ex-
quisitely done and show a sar-
donic humor and manner that
reminded me of Aubrey Boards
ley's work. Born near Berne,
Switzerland, of Bavarian and
French parentage, Klee went to
Germany to study art. He be-
came an original member of the
Blue Rider" group founded by
kandinsky in Munich in 1912.
Before that time. Klee had got
ten away from the literary en-
phasis in his paintings and draw
ings, as will be obvious from
items of the first decade of this
century in the Phillips show.
Klee was a professor at the
Bauhaus from 1920-29, then at