Paul Klee
(In the Kairouan Style, Transposed into the Moderate), 1914
Watercolour and pencil on paper on cardboard, 12,3 x 19,5 cm
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern
In 1914, Paul Klee travelled with August Macke and Louis Moilliet to Tunisia for two weeks. Kairouan was one of the places they visited. It was in Tunisia that Klee first painted landscapes divided into fields of colour. Upon his return, Klee continued to explore his impressions of Tunisia and the artistic discoveries he made there. In this work, he painted rectangular areas of varying lengths that are interspersed with circles. He composed the painting using light and dark tones, cold and warm colours, as well as angular and rounded surfaces. It is one of the first works that Klee made using fields of colour alone – a pure abstraction.