Lot Essay
Mit dem grnen Quadrat is one of Klee's most delicate Paintings of Squares. As C, Geelhar has pointed out, 'The paintings of squares were inspired by the urge, in Worringer's words: 'to win from the unclear factors of perception , which is what really imparts to the external thing its relativity, an abstract of the object capable of forming a whole for the imagination' (Abstraction and Empathy, London, 1948, p.41). This can only succeed with the elements of the purest abstraction, namely geometric-chrystalline regularity' (Paul Klee and the Bauhaus, 1973, p. 44).
Klee's geometrical dissection of the surface of the picture, which he had experimented with since the Tunisian watercolours of 1914, was the artist's ambitious synthesis of orphism and cubism, and his ultimate expression of his quest for an 'active harmony'.
Klee's impression of his visit to Tunisia in 1914 remained vivid in his mind and eye for a long time. In Mit dem grunen Quadrat, painted five years later, he once again evokes the sun-flooded gardens of St. Germain, the European colony near Tunis. Here, however, nature no longer dictates his choice of colours. These are bright and luminous with contrasting black squares surrounding the central green quadrant. The group of seven watercolours to which this work belongs - all approximately the same height but of slighly different width - is solely based on the gardens at St. Germain. Two were painted directly on site, the other five were conjured up from Klee's memory.
The present work is in fact very close to Sdliche Grten from the the same series with a similar green quadrant in the center, today housed in the Heinz Berggruen collection.
Klee's geometrical dissection of the surface of the picture, which he had experimented with since the Tunisian watercolours of 1914, was the artist's ambitious synthesis of orphism and cubism, and his ultimate expression of his quest for an 'active harmony'.
Klee's impression of his visit to Tunisia in 1914 remained vivid in his mind and eye for a long time. In Mit dem grunen Quadrat, painted five years later, he once again evokes the sun-flooded gardens of St. Germain, the European colony near Tunis. Here, however, nature no longer dictates his choice of colours. These are bright and luminous with contrasting black squares surrounding the central green quadrant. The group of seven watercolours to which this work belongs - all approximately the same height but of slighly different width - is solely based on the gardens at St. Germain. Two were painted directly on site, the other five were conjured up from Klee's memory.
The present work is in fact very close to Sdliche Grten from the the same series with a similar green quadrant in the center, today housed in the Heinz Berggruen collection.