24Eins, zwei, drei, Dickbauch

”Eins, zwei, drei, Dickbauch” (One, two, three, fatbelly) is considered one of Jeanne Mammen‘s late cipher images. The artist has further reduced her motifs to single symbols – here clear white lines on top of red, brown and green color fields. The circles and lines might represent a human form, which is stretching out its left arm with fingers spread, and the right pointing to the side, toward a rectangle. The lower part of the image might be a continuation of this figure, or an independent one. ”One, two, three, fatbelly” is also a cipher. It is unclear what the artist was specifically referring to, but from her correspondence with Max Delbrück we know she was visiting art exhibitions and had been particularly impressed by the work of Paul Klee.