Paul Klee

This is one of Paul Klee’s paintings that, at first glance, seem unremarkable and simple, but on closer inspection are all the more surprising and fascinating. Look closely at how Klee has worked here! The artist did not simply string together differently coloured, largely geometric surfaces. He did indeed do this as a first step. The fields of colour are easy to spot. They are mainly rectangles, but there are also irregular shapes. One striking feature is a segment of a circle in the top left-hand corner. On top of this already varied structure, Klee applied another layer – or rather two. These consist of the small spots that Klee combined to form larger areas. Each spot is painted in two layers, first in white and then with another colour on top – in this way, Klee succeeded in intensifying the brightness of the colour. The spotted areas do not match the areas underneath. And if you look again, you can also see the intricate grid of the fabric the artist used to paint on. For this picture, Klee painted on a piece of gauze. This resulted in a complex layered structure. In a letter to his wife Lily, Klee remarked in 1932:

“At the moment my work has less to do with paintings that are to be completed than with experiments with a variety of new primers. This brings me back to glazes. I suspect I will then combine this with a technique known as Pointillism. I’ll leave it for the time being. Some of them contain a lot of sand, but have been treated appropriately (in the experimental workshop for painting techniques).”

This statement by Klee highlights the extent to which the artist experimented – he even referred to his studio as an “experimental workshop”. His stippled works or Pointillist paintings can probably be regarded as such experiments. Experiments which Klee was presumably not fully satisfied with. After all, he only created this kind of works in 1932.

Klee’s Pointillist paintings are reminiscent of the work of the Post-Impressionists – artists in France at the end of the 19^th century who were also called Pointillists. They, however, painted figurative pictures and tried to achieve certain optical effects.