Zentrum Paul Klee EN

The picture «la belle jardinière», also known as «a bourgeois ghost», is a staging of surreal amusement. The schematic figure made up of red and blue lines, ironically titled by Paul Klee, the beautiful gardener in crinoline, holds in her raised left hand a bunch of flowers.The bourgeois ghost appears as a magic shining phantom, which avoids every attempt at interpretation. The lines, which give the ghost its form, appear like fluorescent red and blue light tubes, whose coloured light shines on the brownish ground. The brown background is completely structured with lively drawings, amongst them stencil drawings.Klee achieved with the contrast of the full, intensely coloured lines of the «belle jardinière» and the brightly coloured background, a pronounced spatial effect with colour. The colours shine fluorescently over the irregularly white grounded jute material.Klee developed this figure on the basis of his pencil drawing «With flowers», and raised the flower woman with only a few strokes into an uncanny gardener. The simplicity in the use of sculptural means is also in the late works always an expression of the greatest creative concentration. The beautiful gardener appears as a ghost of the bourgeois. Perhaps the title contains a side reference to the art appreciation of the National Socialists, who idealised the artistic concept of the 19th century for ideological reasons and contrasted it with the modern art they defamed as degenerate.

Even though the picture «Individualized Altimetry of Layers» was only created in 1930, it nevertheless indicates a direct relationship in its formal structure to the Egyptian water colours. The composition is divided into twelve horizontal strips, called layers by Klee, which are cut through by five vertical bars. With each step, the layers are either divided or joined back together again. The rhythm of the self-doubling layers derives from the right hand edge of the picture. This is not a water colour but a painting with paste colours which draws the picture closer to the square pictures. The regular repetition of a colour trio is then replaced by an entirely individual colouring. The centre is dominated by a red square and held in equilibrium by different strips of colour. Out of the bright green arises from below the intense movement over the red to a bright blue stripe, which at the top of the picture is underlayed with pale pink. In between repeated dark and light shades are freely arranged, so that despite the strong contrasts the impression of a closed but in itself harmonic movement of colours is created.

The picture was painted in 1939, when Paul Klee was driven from his position at the Düsseldorf Academy and living again in Berne. It is not unlikely, that Klee in this picture of the high-spirited was alluding to the National Socialists in Germany. Precisely the drummer’s arms refer to Hitler, who was called the "eternal drummer".

The period in which the painting „Pomona, overripe“ was created can also be seen as a specially fertile time: As a result of his illness with progressive scleroderma Klee was only able to execute 25 works in 1936, and yet the following year was the beginning of a phase of extraordinary creative strength until his death.In the final working years fruits were amongst the most important motifs for his pictures. Klee related these concentrations of content into his own work during these years and understood this as the „fruit“ of a long artistic maturing process. In the painting „Pomona, overripe“, this theme links the sensuous experience to its mythological source.

Paul Klee entered the painting "The creator", in his oeuvre catalogue in 1934 under number 213. Next to the entry, he wrote: "not touched for several years". Klee frequently left paintings sitting in his studio for long periods, only to pull them out at the right time, rework them, or paint them over. He probably began this painting in his Dessau Bauhaus period and did not work on it again until he had left Germany for good to live in Switzerland.

Paul Klee returned to Berne, the city of his childhood and youth, on the 23rd December 1933. This was not done willingly, but was the enforced reaction to the accession to power by the National Socialists in Germany. From the beginning Paul and Lily Klee had observed the developments in Germany with unease. In Weimar and Dessau they were forced to experience the ugliest attacks on the Bauhaus by the National Socialists.

Until December 1918 Klee is in wartime service in Gersthofen and is not released until February 1919. During the last three war years Klee experiences a productive work phase, which stands in crass antithesis to the circumstances all around. The numerous aquarelle paintings from this time are dominated by radiant colours, which are not yet subordinate to a strict colour order. Rather they stem from sensitivity and expression.

They were made of plaster and were called "Mr. Death", "Kasperl", "Gretl, his wife", "Sepperl, his best friend", "the Devil", and "the Policeman2. With one exception, they were all destroyed in bombing in Würzburg in 1945.

The view of the city turns into a play of simple square shaped areas and shades of colour casually laid upon each other. From this point it was just a small step to the water colours of pure coloured squares which were created on his return and in memory of Kairuan. In the evening Klee noted in his diary: „Colour has caught me. I do not need to search for it. It has me for ever, I know it. That is the happy meaning of this moment: I and colour are united. I am a painter. “

In his black watercolours he laid layer after layer of black, almost transparent paint on the paper and in the superimposition of the layers he achieved a nuanced gradation of light and ark. In "Bucket and watering can", 1910, he continued this process in gentle watercolour tones. Here too he placed almost transparent layers of colours side by side and above all over one another. In the process the motif gradually disappears in the flatness of the application of paint. The outlines become vague, as they often flow together with the surroundings. There is a complete lack of drawn detail. The fleeting nature of the composition and its high level of abstraction recall Japanese ink-wash painting.