Giftbeeren 1920

Paul Klee made *Giftbeeren* with watercolor and ink using the paper as an active element to set off the reds and blues that dominate the picture. I love the orange border framing the composition: it gives the painting a surreal, theatrical feeling, like a stage. There's an arrow pointing downwards towards the green hills, from which a delicate black sprig emerges, so that the eye wanders up and down. There are berries, of course—Giftbeeren means Poison Berries in German—but they look like eyes, too, watching us as we look at them. The painting’s got a playful, improvisational quality, like Klee was just letting his imagination run wild, mixing up colors, shapes, and lines to see what would happen. It reminds me a little of Miró, or maybe even some of the Surrealists, with its dreamlike imagery and bizarre juxtapositions. And of course, Klee himself was part of the Bauhaus movement, where artists were encouraged to experiment and break down the boundaries between different art forms. What a lineage to be part of! Painting, as always, remains such an exciting conversation across the ages.