On this and the next four pages, you will find some of the wonderful, satirical drawings of Heinrich Kley. A German painter of some note, in the early 1900's Kley turned from portraiture and still life to the audacious pen work that has made him famous.
Kley's world is a fantastic jungle of nymphs, centaurs, people as large as buildings, and elephants as small as children. His humans rarely wear clothing, but his animals may appear in top hats, coats, and spats.
In Kley's world, a proper, bookish gentleman dreams of naked pleasure on a faraway island with champagne and native girls, elephants dance ballet and visit urinals, women suckle tigers and struggle with centaurs, and little people drink from the skull of a friendly giant. Kley's art is, by turns, humorous, bizarre, frightening – always fantastic – yet always catching something of the real world, too. Few artists have brought such vigor and freshness to line work.
Considering the nature of his art, the rumor that Kley went insane and died in an asylum is perhaps not too surprising. He actually died in 1942 of malnutrition and general suffering in one of Hitler's concentration camps.
Drawings selected from "The Drawings of Heinrich Kley," Borden Publishing Co., Los Angeles, California.
Kley's world is whimsical...
Violent...
...macabre
