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1924

Tannhäuser

Paul Klee

Swiss, 1879 - 1940

The figure represented in this drawing is that of Tannhäuser, the protagonist in the opera of the same name by the nineteenth-century German composer Richard Wagner. The scrolls-similar in shape to the musical notation for the treble clef, the f-shaped holes on a violin, and the lyre that adorns Tannhäuser's head-aptly convey the work's musical subject.

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