Cote de provence 1927

Paul Klee made this geometric watercolour with pen and ink and a whole lotta patience. Look at the evenness of the little painted and drawn horizontal and vertical lines, like a weaving, or maybe a musical score. I can just imagine Klee carefully layering these colours, one over the other, in some kind of intuitive, yet rational way. It feels very Bauhaus, which is where he taught for a while. See how he introduces shapes like squares, rectangles, and pyramids over the top, each containing different coloured straight lines like little architectural models of a town? Klee’s play with colour and form creates a sense of depth and movement on a very shallow plane, reminding me of other greats like Josef Albers and Agnes Martin, all in their own way dedicated to the language of abstraction. It makes me want to try something new in my studio, right now.