Details
The image
A grid of small colour fields, each one slightly different, arranged like a window or a map. The lines are drawn rather than ruled and the colours are pale and close in value. Nothing depicts anything: the picture is a structure of patches.
Where it comes from
In 1914 Klee travelled to Tunisia and wrote that colour had taken hold of him, what he saw in the light and architecture of Hammamet became the basis for the way he painted for the rest of his life. After the trip he treated the picture surface as a mosaic of squares, an approach that shaped modern graphic design as much as painting.
On the wall
It asks for light and for calm: a study, a bedroom, a reading corner. Because the values are close together, it needs a wall that is not too dark and it rewards looking close rather than from across the room. In a group it should be the quietest piece.
In company
Pairs well with pale wood, white walls and other works on paper and it looks best in a light frame with a wide mount. Avoid saturated neighbours, the pale grid would disappear. It is also the kind of picture that changes with the light through the day. Hung beside another piece from the Paul Klee collection, it reads as part of a series rather than a single picture.
