Hauptweg und Nebenwege Paul Klee Buy Art Prints Now
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Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on September 27, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000

Paul Klee’s Hauptweg und Nebenwege

Hauptweg und Nebenwege is Paul Klee's German title for the 1929 painting presented on this site as Highway and Byways. These names identify one artwork, numbered 1929,90 in Klee's annual sequence. A Staatliche Museen zu Berlin bilingual exhibition checklist places “Hauptweg und Nebenwege” and “Highway and by-ways” on the same line, with Museum Ludwig, Cologne, as lender. The two older images on this site also show the same arrangement of a broad central route and narrower adjacent strips; their colour casts differ because they are separate reproductions.[1][2]

For the full object account, material discussion, image reading and references, see the Highway and Byways page. Hauptweg und Nebenwege and Highway and Byways are two titles for the same painting.[1][2]

The Berlin checklist records oil on canvas, 83.7 × 67.5 cm and work number 1929,90. The owning museum's indexed record gives a slightly different height, 83.5 cm. The principal page reports the disagreement and discusses technical research without treating a photograph's colour balance as an exact measure of the painting's colours. The old copy here imagined fallen leaves, pedestrians, a park and Giza stones without object evidence; those descriptions are withdrawn.[1][2]

References

  1. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Das Universum Klee exhibition worklist, 2008, p. 3: one bilingual entry for Museum Ludwig, Hauptweg und Nebenwege / Highway and by-ways, 1929,90, oil on canvas, 83.7 × 67.5 cm, View source.
  2. The History of Art, Highway and Byways, principal referenced artwork page and its Museum Ludwig, technical and interpretation sources. Local draft at /paul-klee/highway-and-byways/, View source.