Festungsbau

Klee joined the Weimar Bauhaus in January, 1921, and the interdisciplinary program of the school, with its strong emphasis on architecture and design, had a significant impact on Klee's work during the twenties. He investigated the spatial possibilities of the picture plane in new ways, while retaining the influences of Cubist structure and the color theories of Robert Delaunay's Orphist movement. He took an idiosyncratic approach to the rules of classical perspective and utilized architectural forms in numerous works during this period, while at the same time retaining his customary manner of constructing pictures, in which imagery is drawn on a vaguely empty space, or integrated within a complex structure of color planes.

The present work immediately precedes a series of four compositions (Klee Foundation, ed., op. cit., nos. 2641, 2642, 2646 and 2647), similarly constructed of rail fence-like planes, which were intended as abstract studies in perspective. The use of these partially open planes allows the artist to create an architectural sense of space that is maze-like and overlapping while remaining airily transparent. The final work in this series, Das Tor der Nacht (The Gate of the Night; Klee Foundation, no. 2647) also uses these fence-shapes as a kind of defensive barricade, which divides the space and establishes a protected zone within the picture.