Garden of Passion 1913

Paul Klee made "Garden of Passion" as an etching, using line as the key to unlock the image. Klee’s use of etching to carve out his vision—it’s a testament to art-making as a deep, physical engagement. Looking closely, the garden feels like a world viewed through a shattered lens, with figures and foliage emerging from a dense network of lines. See the way the lines build up in the foreground, almost like a thicket? It’s as though Klee wants us to feel the intensity of growth and decay all at once. You can sense the labor in each etched line, the careful act of revealing form through subtraction. And that's the thing about art; it invites us to see the world, and feel it, in ways we never imagined. Klee's work reminds me a bit of Max Ernst, another artist who embraced the unexpected and found beauty in the process of discovery.