Bird Landscape 1925

Here is a Paul Klee, called Bird Landscape, made at some point, we don’t know when, with ink and watercolor. The way Klee’s put this together, the ground is stained with these pale pinky washes, it’s really ethereal. Over this, the black ink makes all sorts of marks and delicate lines that feel a bit like the doodles you might make while on the phone. Except, here, these marks suggest a landscape, and right there on the left, you can see the bird. The marks are dry, scratchy and spidery, nothing like a confident brushstroke. Instead, you feel the artist feeling their way through the process. Look at how the horizontal line of the landscape sits against the pink ground and the bird is perched right there on top of one of those marks. Klee's work has always reminded me of Miró. It’s like he’s invented his own alphabet, and we’re all just trying to learn how to read it.