Paul Klee

Strasser Collection, Zurich
Sir & Lady Edward Hulton, London (acquired by 1955)
Galerie Beyeler, Basel
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1973

London, Tate Gallery, Works by Paul Klee from the Collection of Mrs Edward Hulton, 1955, no. 9 (with incorrect medium)
Edinburgh, The Royal Scottish Academy & London, Tate Gallery, Der Blaue Reiter: The Blue Rider Group, 1960, no. 88
Wuppertal, Kunst- und Museumsverein; Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen; Frankfurt, Frankfurter Kunstverein; Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus & Dortmund, Museum am Ostwall, Sammlung Sir Edward und Lady Hulton, London, 1964-65, no. 71
Zurich, Kunsthaus, Sammlung Sir Edward und Lady Hulton, London, 1967-68, no. 73
Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Klee. 'Kunst ist ein Schöpfungsgleichnis', 1973, no. 13, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Marcel Brion, Klee, Paris, 1955, no. 16, illustrated (with incorrect medium)
Ake Meyerson, Klee, Stockholm, 1956, no. 16, illustrated
Will Grohmann, Der Maler Paul Klee, Cologne, 1966, illustrated in colour p. 77
Will Grohmann, Paul Klee, London, 1967, illustrated in colour p. 81
Alain Bonfand, Paul Klee. L'oeil en trop, Paris, 1988, vol. I, no. 11, catalogued p. 119; vol. II, no. 11, illustrated in colour p. 38
The Paul Klee Foundation (ed.), Paul Klee, Catalogue Raisonné, London, 1999, vol. 3, no. 2314, illustrated p. 142

Executed on thick wove paper, attached to the artist's mount. There are artist's pinholes in the top two corners. Apart from a very small crease in the lower left corner of the sheet which is integral to the medium, and a light surface abrasion to the watercolour in the lower right of the artist's mount, this work is in very good condition. Colours: In comparison with the printed catalogue illustration, the colours are overall fairly accurate, although slightly stronger and fresher in the original.
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Verging between figuration and abstraction, Bäumchen is a joyful, vibrantly coloured work on the theme of the garden, one of Klee's favourite subjects. The composition is built out of bold blocks of colour that merge into one another, evoking a natural setting that surrounds the tree in the centre, while at the same time emphasising the flatness of the picture plane. The use of bright colours harmoniously juxtaposed in mosaic-like interlocking planes recalls the block-like squares with which he had previously depicted North African architecture, and heralds a new tendency towards abstraction.

 

Will Grohmann wrote about the present work: 'This work is one of the long series of oil paintings that mark the year 1919. It is noteworthy for the fact that, at the time, Klee had rarely made so exclusive a use of color. There are no contours, unless you take the little tree in the middle for an outlined form. [...] The colors pass into one another, forming eddies and currents, and are governed not so much by the familiar laws of color theory as by Klee's desire to compose music with color. In the upper part he does this in sonata form, in the lower part contrapuntally, in a way not unlike the colored squares of the Tunisian watercolors, although the paint on the shrubbery at the bottom is thick and fuzzy at the edges. There are green bushes next to violet-red and blue ones; that is, no question of likeness to nature, however clear everything seems at first sight. [...] What is essential is not the "program," but Klee's way of compositing music with color. Klee is anticipating himself here, for only much later did he compose color music so boldly. In his last years, however, such compositions express disintegration rather than growth and joie de vivre, as here' (W. Grohmann, op. cit., 1967, p. 80).