Insula Dulcamara 1938

Paul Klee made Insula Dulcamara in Switzerland using oil and ink. It’s like he dreamt up a little island, a secret getaway full of symbols and quirky characters. The colours are soft, like watercolour washes—pale blues, greens, and sandy browns setting a hazy background. And then, BAM! Black lines swoop across the surface, outlining shapes that are part-creature, part-architecture, part-who-knows-what? I can imagine Klee, hunched over this canvas, totally absorbed. He’s drawing with paint, making up a language as he goes along. There’s this one line that snakes across the top—is it a road? A river? Or just a doodle that took on a life of its own? Klee was into that kind of stuff. He was always playing with signs and symbols, like he was trying to decode the world with his paintbrush. His paintings feel like whispers, hints of something bigger that we can only glimpse. Like a dream you can't quite remember. He probably looked at other artists like Kandinsky. All of them were in conversation, riffing off each other’s ideas. Klee leaves so much open, always inviting us to bring our own stories to the canvas.