Before the snow 1920

This is Paul Klee’s “Before the Snow,” with no date given, and it’s in the Allenbach Collection in Bern, Switzerland. The way Klee works with color here, so translucent and dreamlike, makes me think about how art is always this process of layering, of seeing through one thing to another. The colors are earthy, and the image feels suspended between a landscape and something more interior. There's a central form, like a flower or maybe a figure, built up from semi-transparent planes of color. It's all very delicate, very subtle, yet the overall effect is one of quiet intensity. Look at the way the colors bleed into one another, the edges soft and undefined. It’s like Klee is trying to capture a feeling, a memory, rather than a literal depiction of something. It reminds me a bit of Arthur Dove's work, that same sense of trying to distill the essence of a thing. Art is never about having all the answers, but about embracing the questions.