Baum und Architektur-Rhythmen (Tree and Architecture--Rhythms) 1920

Paul Klee made this watercolour, Tree and Architecture Rhythms, at some point; there's no date recorded for the work. Looking at the piece, I’m struck by the way Klee lets the colours do their own thing, like they're alive and just hanging out together. The colours are soft, almost like they’re whispering to each other. See how the different shapes bump up against each other, not quite fitting, but somehow still making a kind of sense? It’s like a visual puzzle. The paint is thin, so the colours seem to glow. It's like he's creating a world that's both real and imagined, like a dream you can almost touch. If you look at the top right, there's a shape that could be a tree, but it's also kind of like a snowflake, or even a weird architectural plan. Klee, like Picasso, was interested in primitive art and the art of children. He probably admired their simplicity, directness, and freedom from convention. It’s a reminder that art doesn’t always need to make perfect sense; it just needs to make you feel something.