Paul Klee

In “Elevated horizon”, Paul Klee’s longstanding fascination with motion as the basic element of artistic form intensified into symbolism. Twelve years earlier, he had already derived the development of the visual from the concept of motion: “Overcoming the first dead calm was the first act of motion (line)”, he wrote in his 1920 “Creative Confession”, setting the course he was to follow for the coming eleven years as a teacher and an artist at the Bauhaus. Starting with the “active line, which moves freely”, Klee explored the fundamentals and forms of motion – whose energy he represented with an arrow. In this exploration, his central theme was the escape from restrictions of stasis by overcoming gravity – the transition from inhibited, earthly movement, to free, cosmic motion.

The arrow in “Elevated horizon” has precisely that function: its dynamics also “elevate” the coloured stripes of the horizon and follow the movement upward. But, like every earthly movement, this rise is also bound by gravity: “Never quite reaching where motion becomes endless! The realisation that where there is a beginning, there can never be endlessness.”

This dichotomy is revealed in the materiality of the painting. The idiosyncratic choice of paint and backing – casein paint on burlap – gives the impression of an almost rough, unworked surface, which undermines the colour effects of the horizontal stripes. This discrepancy leads to a contradiction between the message and the material of the painting.