Image source: artvee.com
Introduction
Paul Klee’s Witch with a Comb (1922) presents a singular vision that melds whimsy and mystery through a deceptively spare pen-and-ink composition. At first glance, the drawing depicts a tall, attenuated figure crowned by a comb-like headdress, its body composed of rhythmically spaced, draped lines. Yet beneath this minimalist rendering lies a multilayered exploration of folklore, psychological projection, and formal experimentation. Created during Klee’s tenure at the Bauhaus, the work exemplifies his conviction that a simple arrangement of line and form can evoke complex associations—here, the archetype of the witch as both trickster and mediator between realms. In what follows, we will unpack the historical context, material techniques, compositional strategies, and symbolic resonances that make Witch with a Comb a landmark in Klee’s oeuvre.
Historical Context
In 1922, Paul Klee was immersed in the dynamic environment of the Weimar-era Bauhaus, where he served as both instructor and innovator. This period was marked by a fervent interest in synthesizing art, craft, and theory, with an emphasis on elemental principles of form. Europe—still reeling from World War I—experienced a resurgence of interest in mythic and folkloric imagery as a means of confronting trauma and rediscovering cultural roots. Klee tapped into this impulse by referencing the witch figure, a potent symbol of otherness, power, and liminality. While contemporaries explored Cubism, Dada, and emerging Surrealist ideas, Klee’s work carved its own niche by engaging mythology through reductive abstraction, forging a link between collective memory and personal expression.
Material and Technique
Witch with a Comb is executed in fine black ink on lightly tinted paper. Klee’s pen produces lines of remarkable precision and uniform weight, suggesting a mechanical regularity even as slight wavering betrays the hand’s presence. The paper’s subtle cream tone sets a warm counterpoint to the stark linear motifs, and its slight tooth provides enough resistance to create gentle textural variation. No washes or shading intervene; the drawing relies entirely on line to articulate volume and pattern. Klee’s meticulous control of the nib—evident in the comb’s slender teeth and the drapery’s parallel strands—underscores his belief in line as the “form-giver,” capable of summoning mood and meaning from the barest graphic elements.
Composition and Form
The figure in Witch with a Comb occupies the central axis of the sheet, its height dominating the vertical format. The head is an irregular oval, bisected by a faint vertical guide line that echoes Klee’s pedagogical sketches. Atop the head, a fan of closely spaced lines culminates in small ink dots—an abstract comb that also resembles antennae or a crown. Below, the body unfolds in a series of overlapping draperies, each tier delineated by delicate strokes that widen toward the base. The arms extend downward as bold, arrow-like appendages, directing attention to the extremities. This interplay of thick and thin, open and closed, static and directional elements creates a dynamic yet harmonious whole that guides the eye from crown to feet.
Line and Gesture
Line is the primary vehicle of expression in this drawing. Klee varies spacing and curvature to evoke different tactile qualities: the comb’s rigid, evenly spaced teeth contrast with the flowing loops of the drapery, and the arms’ heavy arrows stand in stark relief against the slender supporting lines. Subtle deviations in curvature—gentle undulations in the headdress, slight asymmetries in the drapes—imbue the figure with a sense of hand-crafted vitality. Klee’s deliberate alternation between measured precision and playful irregularity animates the drawing, transforming a static outline into a gestural, living presence that seems to hum with latent energy.
Use of Space and Negative Field
Although the figure commands the composition, Klee leverages the surrounding negative space to amplify its spectral quality. The blank paper around the witch functions as an unspoken void, evoking night skies or liminal thresholds. By avoiding any background detail, Klee isolates his subject, inviting viewers to project their own associations onto the empty field. The deliberate margin around the figure also underscores its ritualistic or emblematic status, as though the witch’s form floats within a sacred frame. This spareness heightens the work’s psychological impact, suggesting presence through absence and inviting contemplation of what lies beyond the drawn lines.
Color and Tonal Modulation
While monochrome, Witch with a Comb exhibits tonal subtlety. The paper’s ivory ground adds warmth, and the density of ink varies slightly where lines converge or overlap, creating darker accents in the headdress dots and the arrow shafts. These tonal shifts reinforce hierarchy within the composition: the headdress and hands read as primary focal points, while the drapery tiers recede into softer midtones. The minimal tonal range underscores Klee’s mastery of white space as an active component, allowing the drawing’s lightest and darkest moments to resonate without intermediary shading.
Iconography of the Witch
The witch archetype carries centuries of cultural baggage: at once feared and venerated, marginal and powerful. Klee’s abstraction preserves these tensions. The comb crowns the head like a ritualistic tool, suggesting acts of grooming, preparation, or incantation. The drapery evokes layered garments—perhaps cloaks of invisibility or ceremonial robes—while the arrow-hands could point to the witch’s dual role as harbinger and healer. By stripping away detailed physiognomy, Klee universalizes the figure, inviting viewers to project their own method of meaning onto her. She becomes a cipher for collective anxieties about the unknown and the unknowable.
Symbolic Meaning of the Comb
The comb motif appears repeatedly in folklore as a tool to ward off evil spirits or to encourage transformation. In Witch with a Comb, the comb’s stylization—vertical teeth ending in rounded nodes—blurs the line between object and organism. Are these teeth combing air or channeling energy? Each dot at the tip could represent a sealing point, a bead of magic, or a node in an invisible circuit. The comb thus serves as both weapon and instrument of ritual, reinforcing the witch’s ambiguous agency. Through reductive graphic means, Klee captures the comb’s multifaceted symbolism, turning a mundane implement into a talisman of creative power.
Psychological Underpinnings
Beyond mythic resonance, Witch with a Comb engages psychological themes of projection and alterity. The figure’s blank face—expressed only through two tiny eyes and a hint of a nose—functions as a mirror for internal states. The viewer is invited to inhabit the witch’s gaze or to recognize fears and desires reflected in her empty mask. The drawing’s narrow axis and towering silhouette evoke feelings of otherworldly surveillance, as though the witch observes from a dimension just beyond perception. In this way, Klee taps into the uncanny, blending the familiar (a human form, a comb) with the unfamiliar (extreme elongation, glyphic abstraction) to unsettle and provoke introspection.
Relationship to Musical Analogy
Klee often likened painting to music, treating lines as melodic phrases and shapes as harmonic chords. In this work, the comb’s parallel lines function like a bar of staccato notes, punctuated by the rounded nodes akin to musical accents. The drapery tiers descend in measured intervals, suggesting a descending scale or a series of chord progressions. The arrow-hands strike like percussion, marking downbeats that anchor the melodic weave. While no sound emanates from the drawing, its rhythmic cadences evoke a silent score, inviting viewers to “hear” the witch’s incantation as they trace the graphic motifs.
Influence of Surrealism and Expressionism
Although Klee was never formally a Surrealist, his work from the early 1920s resonates with the movement’s interest in dream imagery and automatism. Witch with a Comb shares with Surrealist drawings an economy of form and an emphasis on the uncanny. At the same time, the expressive distortions of the figure—the elongated proportions, the disproportionate headdress—echo Expressionist concerns with internal states manifesting in external form. Klee synthesizes these currents without subsuming his own pedagogical rigor, demonstrating how fantastical subject matter can coexist with disciplined formal inquiry.
Klee’s Bauhaus Pedagogy
During his tenure at the Bauhaus, Klee developed a theoretical framework that emphasized the analysis of line, color, and form as foundational artistic elements. He encouraged students to engage in exercises that teased out the expressive potential of simple motifs. In Witch with a Comb, one sees the direct application of such exercises: the systematic spacing of lines, the transformative power of slight variation, and the integration of symbolic motifs into abstract structures. The drawing stands as a testament to Klee’s conviction that playful exploration and theoretical seriousness are mutually reinforcing.
Intersection of the Fantastic and the Mundane
Klee’s genius lies in his ability to merge everyday objects—like a comb—with fantastical figures in such a way that neither seems out of place. The witch stands on a minimal ground line, suggesting a stage rather than a natural landscape. Yet her attire and tools are rooted in domestic reality. This tension between the mundane and the magical underscores Klee’s broader project of revealing wonder in ordinary forms. By translating a comb into a crown of power, he invites viewers to reconsider the latent poetry in commonplace objects.
Reception and Legacy
Although Witch with a Comb is less widely known than some of Klee’s color-saturated works, it has garnered attention among scholars for its distilled approach to symbolism and form. It appears in studies of Klee’s graphic practice and in exhibitions exploring the intersection of myth and modernism. Contemporary artists working in line-based media often cite Klee’s pen-and-ink drawings as a key influence, drawn to his economy of means and his capacity to evoke multilayered narratives with minimal gestures. The drawing endures as a touchstone for exploring how abstraction can convey evocative stories.
Interpretive Possibilities
The openness of Witch with a Comb allows for myriad interpretations. One might see the figure as a protector, combing away malevolent forces. Another reading positions her as a trickster, the arrows in her hands threatening or averting harm. Psychoanalytic approaches could view the comb as a phallic symbol or as a tool of self-care, while feminist readings might interrogate the witch figure as an icon of female agency outside patriarchal norms. Each angle finds support in the drawing’s careful balance of suggestion and ambiguity, testifying to Klee’s skill in crafting images that continue to spark dialogue.
Conclusion
Witch with a Comb exemplifies Paul Klee’s mastery of line as a conduit for poetic imagination. Through a sparse yet resonant pen-and-ink composition, he conjures a figure that straddles myth and modernism, ritual and pedagogy. The drawing’s careful orchestration of form, space, and symbol invites sustained engagement, revealing new insights with each viewing. As a study in the transformative power of graphic reduction, it stands as a touchstone for artists and theorists alike, reminding us that even the simplest motifs can harbor profound mysteries.