Paul Klee

In the early 1920s – at the beginning of his years at the Bauhaus in Weimar – Paul Klee paints a number of square pictures. They consist of a number of more or less square blocks that Klee arranges as completely abstract images. He gives them a relation to the figurative world only through their title, if at all. He painted this "Colour Table" in 1930, towards the end of his time at the Bauhaus. Nonetheless, it bears a relation to earlier square pictures. Klee paints rectangles and squares of roughly the same size on paper coated with black primer. He mixes pastels with glue, the colours muted. The colours are mixed both on the palette and also by layering them over the dark background.

Klee adds "in Grey Major" to the title of his picture. It is an indication that grey tones predominate. For Klee, grey is a neutral colour and he often uses it around the edges of his works, as if framing them. Neutral grey does not compete with the bright colours he often uses, making it an ideal boundary and framework for his vibrantly coloured compositions. Much of Klee's use of colour is based on the theories of colour of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Philipp Otto Runge. Around 1810, Runge developed the colour sphere, on which all colours, including their gradations to black and white, are applied. Black and white form the two poles of the sphere. At the centre of the sphere is neutral grey. This theory was used by Klee in his classes at the Bauhaus, and it also forms the basis of his art – although he often uses it intuitively and playfully and without any thought of rules.