Erika Giovanna Klien

Erika Giovanna Klien is one of the most significant representatives of Viennese Kinetism, an art form that explores movement and its visualization. Alongside watercolor and painting, drawing was one of Klien's preferred media. Even with a limited color palette, she creates works that are both decorative and an exploration of natural movement. This is what makes Klien's work so exceptional. In this particular piece, Klien depicts a conversation. It likely shows two or three passengers in a vehicle sitting next to each other, viewed from the side, resulting in heads of different sizes due to their varying distances from the viewer. The dynamic movement causes the heads to appear "transparent," making visible even those profiles that would be obscured by the figures closer to the viewer. Just as the geometric form, with its inherent simplicity, transparency, uniformity, and precision, provided the optimal foundation for handling the complex and challenging structures of Kinetism—a tradition that has significantly shaped European Modernism since Cézanne and contributed to its inclination towards "machinism" and technoid design—so too did "primitivism" aim to serve the same purpose for Klien in the realm of organic or biomorphic forms.