Coloured Angles
Watercolour, pen and pencil on paper on cardboard, 19,1 x 13,9 cm
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Donation Livia Klee
During World War I, Paul Klee created works dominated by abstract, crystalline forms or zig-zag lines. One example is the watercolour “Coloured Angles,” from 1917. Here, most of the irregular, colourful stripes are sharply angled. Klee varied their colour with transparent watercolour that ranges from soft tones to bright yellow. He thereby achieved a dynamic effect of spatial depth that draws our eye like a vortex. The work may be abstract, but perhaps Klee was alluding to the destruction and violence of war, which he certainly witnessed.