Paul Klee

By 1916, the scale and horror of the First World War are becoming ever clearer. Paul Klee's life and work is also dominated by war. Friends die on the front and, as a German national, he is called up for service. Some of his works display a clear connection to the war, others – such as this watercolour – reference it only indirectly. This is one of a small series of six script images that he creates around this time. Heinscribes a text in large letters, then uses watercolours to paint the forms created by the outlines of the letters. The areas outside the text are also given more or less geometrical colourful form. The colours are generally restrained except for a few vividly bright patches, in particular two bright blue triangles.

The text here consists of two lines from the German translation of a long poem by the Chinese poet Wang Seng Ru, In English, it’s called "The Lonely Wife", and the verse is as follows:

"High and shining stands the moon: I have extinguished my lamp,
And a thousand thoughts arise from the depth of my heart.
My eyes overflow with tears.
And O, What makes my grief all the more bitter,
Is that you cannot be at all aware of how it stands in my heart!"

Wang Seng Ru describes how a lonely wife feels sad in her bedroom when her husband is not with her. This genre of poetry was extremely popular in China in times of war particularly, as most of the poems explore a wife's yearning for a husband who is away fighting. Klee finds this particular poem in a book of Chinese poetry that he has had for some time. However, it is only in 1916 – as war rages around Europe – that he is moved to explore the topic. Interest in Chinese culture, Daoism and pacifism is widespread during the war years, and so this piece could be seen as Klee's commentary on the horrors and consequences of the First World War.