Sparse foliage 1934

This is Sparse Foliage by Paul Klee. Look at the way he's applied these thin washes of paint over the paper, how the colours blush, layer and bleed into each other. And then he scratches in these wiry lines that build this weird vegetal architecture. I imagine Klee, hunched over, gently coaxing this garden to grow out of nothing. What's so cool is the way he’s got these flat shapes, like the yellow square, that bump up against the leafy forms. It almost reminds me of Hilma af Klint’s diagrammatic paintings, but Klee is less mystical and more intuitive somehow. He's feeling it out, you know? It's like he's saying: what if a painting could be a thought, a doodle, or a little experiment in seeing? And how can a few simple colours turn into a whole world? It’s like he's talking to Matisse, Miro, and all the other painters who just want to play.