Po, the Engineer - Constructivist Ideas in Paul Klee's Oeuvre

The point of departure of this study is an oil-transfer drawing with watercolour details from 1922, which Paul Klee titled on the piece of cardboard as "Po", and in his handwritten catalogue of works as "Po, the Engineer". With this work, Klee is clearly responding to the new ideas of Constructivism, which where spreading from Russia at the time. By looking at a selection of works and manuscripts form Paul Klee's "Theory of Pictorial Form and Creative Design", the aim of the study is to demonstrate how, from 1922 onwards, the artist began to critically appropriate these Russian impulses, reshaping them to fit his own purposes, and parodying them to a certain extent, too.