Red Balloon

Identifier: 48.1172.524
Title: Red Balloon
Description: The artist often transformed his experiments in tonal value and line into visual anecdotes. Red Balloon, for example, is at once a cluster of delicately colored, floating geometric shapes and a charming cityscape. Runner at the Goal is an essay in simultaneity; overlapping and partially translucent bars of color illustrates the consecutive gestures of a figure in motion. The flailing arms and sprinting legs add a comic touch to this figure, on whose forehead the number “one” promises a winning finish.
Artist: Paul Klee
Date: 1922
Subject: Painting
Medium: oil painting (technique)
Dimensions: 12 1/2 x 12 1/4 inches (31.8 x 31.1 cm)
Provenance: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Estate of Karl Nierendorf, By purchase
Rights: © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Source: Guggenheim Collection. Item: 48.1172.524