Author
Paul Klee
Movement / period
Avant-garde
Technique
oil on gauze on board
Where it is
Kunstmuseum Basel
A raised brow and mismatched eyes give the face a sly expression.
Highlights
Facts & legends
- The head is built from simple triangles and rectangles, yet seems alive.
- A raised brow and mismatched eyes give the face a sly expression.
- Klee taught at the legendary Bauhaus alongside Kandinsky.
- “Senecio” (Latin for ragwort) also carries Klee’s alternate title “Baldgreis” — “Head of a Man Going Senile.”
- Klee made about 9,000 works and called drawing 'taking a line for a walk'.
More details Why Klee's face resembles a child, a mask, and an old man at once, the botanical joke in its title, why it was painted on gauze, and how it became an early Basel modernist landmark.
A face built like a lesson
Klee turns portraiture into signs
Painted in 1922 while Klee taught at the Bauhaus, the head is assembled from circle, line, angle, and coloured plane. Unequal eyes and a minimal mouth still compel us to invent a personality.
The reduction is not careless. Geometry stays firm while expression slips between calm, anxiety, childhood, and irony.
The title jokes about age
Senecio means both an old man and a plant
The museum gives the double title Senecio (Baldgreis), or bald old man. The word is related to Latin senex, while Senecio is also a botanical genus whose seed heads can resemble white hair.
The apparently childlike face may therefore be aged, theatrical, or ageless. Klee's title opens a second reading rather than fixing one identity.
It is painted on gauze
Fragile material keeps geometry alive
The work is oil over chalk ground on gauze mounted on card, still held by its original yellow-painted frame. Its woven support differs from an ordinary canvas.
Texture and thin colour prevent the diagram from becoming sterile; the frame joins the warm ochres of the head.
Asymmetry keeps changing the mask
The eyes occupy different states
A central line divides without mirroring. One eye is darker, colour fields cross boundaries, and the outer curve refuses the internal grid.
The head can become an actor's mask, puppet, or portrait of a mood because several roles remain visible at once.
Basel bought it early
The 1931 acquisition preceded a major modern collection
Kunstmuseum Basel acquired Senecio in 1931, when it owned very little modern art. It became one of the early works from which that collection grew.
Klee was dismissed from his Düsseldorf post by the Nazis in 1933. The now-beloved small face survived a period that treated freedom of form as a danger.
Official sources
Where to check
- Official institution page Kunstmuseum Basel
- Senecio (Baldgreis)Kunstmuseum Basel
- Basel 1937: acquisition historyKunstmuseum Basel
- Paul Klee's pictorial universePresence Switzerland
Visual context
