Paul Klee
Departure of the Ships
Oil on canvas on wooden panel, 50 x 60 cm
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, on loan from a private collection
This work illuminates Paul Klee’s compositional strategies, as simple as they are effective. On the one hand, Klee worked with contrasting pictorial means: pointed and blunt, angular and curved, light and dark, warm and cold. On the other, he did not merely depict a few sailing ships. Instead, he was concerned with their movement. The triangular shapes of the sails as well as the arches of the ships’ hulls help create a sense of motion. Klee used the arrow to show the ships’ direction to the right, or the “Departure of the Ships,” as the painting is called.