Astral Automata

The interest of the Swiss painter Paul Klee (M.5buchsee, 1879 – Muralto, 1940) for automata probably developed from the beloved tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Die Automaten (The Automaten, 1814) and Der Sandmann (The Man of the Sand, 1817). Inspired by his wife Lily, the artist was also interested in the movement of celestial bodies and astrology. For Klee, the automaton was loaded with an ambivalent connotation – on the one hand subject to the laws of heaven, on the other freed from the fallibility of human judgment – and thus became the perfect new companion of man, suitable to face the mechanization of the Great War.