Paul Klee
Rocky Landscape (with Palms and Fir Trees)
Oil and pen on cardboard, 41,8 x 51,4 cm
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Donation Livia Klee
Around 1912, Klee began to engage with Cubism. He travelled to Paris and became familiar with Cubist works by Pablo Picasso, Robert Delaunay, and Henri Le Fauconnier. But he did not like everything about Cubism – he thought it was dreadful to fragment faces. Rather, his interest lay in the ways Cubism does away with the illusion of spatial depth. Space and the objects within it are dissolved into a two-dimensional representation. Objects are shown from different perspectives at the same time. In the painting “Rocky Landscape,” Klee successfully implemented his own ideas about Cubism. Only the small trees, palms, and sun suggest a landscape. Everything else is divided into a varied and somewhat chaotic composition of colourful planes.