A Woman for Gods

Paul Klee painted A Woman for Gods in 1938. Not only is this considered one of his works after the war, it is one of the final works he did. This was finished just two years before he stopped painting altogether in 1940.

Klee was fond of using abstraction to express his ideas. As a print maker, he often used shapes to bring out his thoughts on the people around him. He did the same for living objects and even philosophical ideas.

Paul Klee was not overly fond of portraiture. He worked with it often enough when it suited his purposes. He did not focus solely on this sort of work. However, during his artistic career he completed several portraits of both male and female subjects. Often, the figures in his portraits may have some element of their bodies emphasised. This is to put greater weight on whatever topic the artist sought to deal with at that time.

A Woman for Gods has several things about it which would make it clearly unrealistic. The artist does not seek to create an image that is accurate or true to life. Instead, as an Expressionist, he painted his response to what he was seeing. Painting his reaction was his aim.

While it may be observed that the woman is on her side and at rest, the position of all the parts of her body are not as one would expect from a person in that position. Nonetheless, that is not Klee's main priority. Everything is as it should be on his canvas, positioned in terms of its importance to him as the artist.

Unlike the geometric forms used throughout Eros, A Woman for Gods is formed mainly through the artist's use of curved lines. This is to be expected to an extent, since these curved lines result in increased focus on the typically curving aspect of the female form.

Though he does not celebrate female beauty by using Realism, each viewer will be likely to think of the elements Klee seems to appreciate, such as the figure's hips, her arms and legs, since he has drawn attention to them. Her breasts are painted in a similar way, as seen through his eyes.