Above: Detail

Above: Full view of mixed medium work

A dazzling Heinrich Kley mixed media work featuring a host of primordial animals engaged in an orgiastic dance of evolution. A splendid cast of characters is assembled by this fondly remembered avant-garde, Jugendstil, German Expressionist artist. This is a rare full color example of the artist’s work, most surviving pieces by Kley are pen & ink drawings. This evocative artwork is rich in humor, technique and imagery. Work is in a wonderful state of preservation and nicely matted and framed in a period gesso frame.

Above: The artist’s signature

Above: Detail

Heinrich Kley is best remembered today for satirical, despairing, and often obscene images which evinced a maniacal distrust of the industrial revolution and its autonomized society. In 1907, a series of remarkable pen & ink drawings appeared in the Munich German Expressionist literary art magazine Die Jugend that captured the growing disillusionment of fin-de-siecle German counter-culture. Kley’s scathing and deftly rendered creations resonated with audiences and Kley became a leading interpreter of the follies and vices that beset mankind. Kley’s art appeared in the United States in 1937 and caught the eye of Walt Disney & Sketch Artists at the Disney studio, including Albert Hurter, Joe Grant and James Bodrero. Hurter introduced Kley’s work to the Disney Studio and Walt Disney accumulated a collection of the artist’s work. The images in Kley’s art inspired a number of animated sequences and characters, including Night on Bald Mountain and the dancing animals of Dance of the Hours in Fantasia.

Above: Framed and matted view in antique gesso frame

Above: Frame profile