The Chapel 1917

Paul Klee made this small but mighty watercolour and ink drawing, The Chapel, at a time when he was exploring the boundaries between abstraction and representation. Look at how Klee builds up the image with layers of geometric shapes, like he's building with children's blocks. There's a dusty, powdery feel to the pigments, and Klee’s lines, especially in the central tower, are softly blurred, which gives the composition a hazy, dreamlike quality. The surface texture feels almost chalky, like the stone of an ancient building. The drawing includes shapes like crescents and stars which seem to float within the structure. Check out the letter ‘F’ near the center, it's like a child has scratched it in. Klee was fascinated by the art of children and those outside the mainstream. His simplified forms and playful approach to perspective remind me of outsider art, where imagination and emotion take precedence over technical skill. It's a reminder that art is a conversation, always borrowing, always transforming. The Chapel is less about a literal place of worship and more about a space of the imagination.