Stadt R 1919

Paul Klee’s *Stadt R* is a city built of color and line. The painting seems to have come into being slowly, with Klee layering colors and shapes, testing and revising, until a strange urban landscape emerged. There are different zones of activity. I like the way he divides the canvas into various geometric shapes, like a puzzle. It's fun to imagine Klee making this. What was he thinking about when he painted the shapes of the buildings? Maybe he was remembering a city he visited. Or maybe it’s an imaginary space. I wonder if the black comma is a bird flying over the city. It’s positioned with a lot of confidence, like it was the last mark he made. Klee, like many artists, has been in an ongoing conversation with other painters. It’s exciting to consider how artists inspire one another’s creativity. Painting is this amazing form of embodied expression, where ambiguity and uncertainty are not a problem. Instead they allow for multiple readings.