Erika Giovanna Klien

1900 Borgo di Valsugana - 1957 New York

  • Title Mother and Child
  • Date c. 1934
  • Technic watercolour on paper
  • Dimensions 34 x 27.5 cm
  • Signature verso designated: Estate Erika Giovanna Klien/Gunther Klien
  • Provenance from the estate of the artist; private property, Germany
  • Literature cf. Marietta Mautner Markhof, Erika Giovanna Klien 1900 - 1957, exhibition catalogue Museum moderner Kunst, Vienna 1987, p. 97, ill. 183
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As a counterpart to a composition of the same format featuring a grieving woman, this sheet thematizes the happiness of togetherness between mother and child. Just as the child's sense of security is articulated through the blue background of the mother's body, so too does the mother figure find her meaning by enclosing or 'sheltering' her inner happiness, embodied in the white, luminous figure of the child. The mother's gestures overlap with the movement of the child's hand reaching for her knee. As a kinetic element, the hands form the active part of the composition and represent the spiritual connection between the two. The pair of images, 'Mourner' and 'Mother and Child,' leave little doubt about the autobiographical background of E.G. Klien's thwarted motherhood. She had a son born out of wedlock, who she had to leave behind in Austria, when moving to the USA.

original german text from Marietta Mautner Markhof