Southern gardens 1921

Paul Klee made this, Southern Gardens, with oil and ink, maybe gouache, on paper mounted on cardboard. It’s a mosaic of warm yellows, greens and oranges, punctuated by simple graphic motifs. I imagine Klee carefully building up this surface, one small patch at a time, with colors shifting and emerging through trial and error, intuition. There are these little tree shapes—sort of like pictograms—floating across the surface, anchoring our eyes. The paint feels thin, stained into the surface. It’s like he’s inviting us into this intimate space. I’m really drawn to the arrow pointing downward. What does it mean? Is it just a compositional element, or is Klee trying to tell us something about gravity, about falling, or maybe about the passage of time? Klee always has a lightness of touch that belies his deeply serious artistic intentions. I think about other artists like Joan Miró who also used simple forms and symbols to tap into a kind of universal language. It’s as if these artists are in conversation with each other, reaching across time and space to share their visions of the world.