Runner at the Goal (Läufer am Ziel)

A figure dominates the composition, abstracted into simple shapes, with a large numeral one marked on its head and both arms lifted upward against a dark backdrop. The palette moves through cream, blue, teal, and red, giving the body a fractured, almost architectural presence. Paul Klee made this watercolor and pencil work on paper, mounted on cardboard with a gouache border, in 1921, and it is held today at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The piece entered the museum's collection through purchase from the Estate of Karl Nierendorf. Klee, who was German-Swiss, worked within the Bauhaus movement, bringing a sense of structure and symbolic shorthand to the human form shown here. One detail worth noticing is how the raised arms and the numeral turn the figure into a sign as much as a body, suspended between portrait and symbol in the surrounding darkness.