Collection of Figurines

Rows of small, stylized figures gather across the canvas, built from simplified geometric shapes rendered in earthy browns, deep reds, and touches of blue, all set against a dark background that pushes the forms forward. The piece suggests a crowd of puppet-like characters arranged almost like specimens on display. Paul Klee painted this work in oil in 1926, and it now belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, having entered the collection through the Berggruen Klee Collection gift. Klee, who held German-Swiss citizenship and whose life ran from 1879 to 1940, worked within the Bauhaus movement, bringing a disciplined approach to form and color to his depictions of the human figure. One detail worth noticing is how the dark ground isolates each figure, making the warm reds and blues seem to glow against the shadow surrounding them.