Paul Klee
Through a Window
Oil on gauze on cardboard, 30 x 51,5 cm
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Donation Livia Klee
This work is called “Through a Window.” Paul Klee painted the windowpane with great precision and delicacy. But what do we see out the window? Abstract fields of colour? Or a landscape? Or both? The composition evokes memories of a landscape with fields planted in a patchwork of different crops. Although it is no more than a memory, this “landscape” could not be more beautifully composed: first, Klee painted irregular fields of colour in shades of yellow, orange, and purple. Then he laid small dabs of colour over them. These dabs are also arranged into small planes, but they do not align with the fields of colour underneath. In this way, layer by layer, a complex, dazzling, and vibrating structure grows, mirroring nature in all its variety.