A whimsical and dazzling watercolor by Heinrich Kley titled “Siche Rude Seiten;” loosely translated as “Our Unrefined Side.” A splendid cast of characters 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 painting is rich in humor, technique and imagery.
Heinrich Kley is best remembered today for satirical, despairing, and often obscene images which evinced a maniacal distrust of the industrial revolution and its automatized 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.
In 1947 the “Drawings of Heinrich Kley” was published with a forward by George Grosz. Of Kley, Grosz wrote: “Kley used the pen like the lariat of a temperamental cowboy [and] is great draftsman of animals. Like Walt Disney he humanizes the beasts […] I am sure that the drawings of Heinrich Kley will be remembered and enjoyed as long as human beings retain the ability to laugh at themselves.”
Work is archivally matted and framed in a handsome antique wood frame. There is a pen and ink drawing on the verso with text and German captions and notations as seen.