“Because this man was born with one wing, he believed he could fly”
Klee was first a draughtsman before becoming a painter. The etchings in his early series, Inventions, demonstrate Klee’s ability to manipulate line and tonal value to create a figure with strange and grotesque limbs. An artist’s inscription in the bottom right corner of the picture explains the underlying concept: “Because this man was born with one wing, he believed he could fly. His attempts, of course, have only resulted in crashes and a broken left arm and leg “. The strange creature could very well represent a kind of self-portrait of the typical progressive artist at the turn of the 20th century, perpetually pursuing his full potential while repeatedly struggling against public incomprehension or apathy.
Paul Klee
Der Held mit dem Flügel (The Hero with the Wing)
I began this series of works thinking about the dream of the man of being able to fly, as an allegory of the imagination, and its terrible reality when realizing that it will be destined to fail, only a few, very few will achieve it.
