Paul Klee
Still Life on Leap Day, 1940
Coloured paste on paper on burlap; original frame, 74,6 x 110,3 cm
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern
Paul Klee called this work a still life, which is typically an arrangement of objects such as fruit or flowers. In Klee’s work, the delicate little flower blooming at the centre is formed by a simple stick figure. To the left, a lush plant with hearty leaves flourishes. To the right are interconnected, coloured surfaces – perhaps they also describe an unusual plant or a sculpture on a tiny pedestal? During his late period, Klee reduced objects and figures to their simplest forms. For the most part, he created them from a just few planes, colours, and lines. The way he treated lines was highly symbolic. Increasingly, Klee’s forms came to stand for ideas instead of specific “specimens.”
“Reduction! One wants to say more than nature and one makes the impossible mistake of wanting to say it with more means than she, instead of fewer.”
Paul Klee, 1908