Sunday, 12 February 2012

Benjamin and Klee

Dora Benjamin bought Walter (on his birthday in 1920) a water color by Paul Klee titled Presentation of the miracle. A second work by Paul Klee, Angelus Novus, acquired by Benjamin the following year, played such an important emotional and intellectual role in his life that it has been anointed as Benjamin’s logo. Why has nothing been written by Benjamin or his friends about that Presentation of the miracle? It is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But how did it get there?