A Guardian Angel Serves a Small Breakfast (Ein Genius serviert ein kleines Frühstück) from the yearbook Die Freude: Blätter einer neuen Gesinnung (Joy: Papers for a New Consciousness)

A Guardian Angel Serves a Small Breakfast (Ein Genius serviert ein kleines Frühstück) from the yearbook Die Freude: Blätter einer neuen Gesinnung (Joy: Papers for a New Consciousness) is a distinctive print created by Paul Klee in 1920. This small-scale graphic work, a lithograph uniquely enhanced with hand-applied watercolor additions, exemplifies the artist's early mastery of integrating precise draftsmanship with expressive color. The image was published as an illustration within the German artistic and literary journal, reflecting the burgeoning interest in spiritual and utopian themes following World War I.

Executed during a pivotal year, 1920, when Klee had begun teaching at the influential Bauhaus school, the piece blends schematic, almost childlike drawing with the abstract sensibilities of the era. The subject matter, which contrasts the sublime figure of a ‘Genius’ or guardian angel with the quotidian act of serving a simple breakfast, is characteristic of Klee's unique blending of spirituality, gentle humor, and domestic observation. Klee employs delicate, simplified forms typical of his post-Expressionist period. The hand-applied watercolor is crucial, distinguishing this particular impression and lending a unique, ethereal warmth to the scene that softens the sharp lines of the lithograph print.

Klee often utilized the medium of prints, allowing his complex visual narratives to be reproduced and circulated widely in the German cultural sphere. This mixed-media approach demonstrates the careful balance Klee maintained between the reproducible clarity required of a lithograph and the subtle expressive power of painting. This particular impression of A Guardian Angel Serves a Small Breakfast is now preserved in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, highlighting the enduring institutional significance of Klee’s highly personal and inventive graphic work within 20th-century German modernism.