Before the Town

Name: Before the Town
Brand: Paul Klee
Price: 189.0 USD
Availability: InStock

1915 · Watercolor on paper mounted on cardboard · Paul Klee

From $49.00

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See it in a room

Before the Town by Paul Klee, shown at 30 × 40 in (76.2 × 101.6 cm) on canvas in Arber Warm Walnut, living — Shown at 30 × 40 in (76.2 × 101.6 cm) · Framed canvas, Arber Warm Walnut · Living room

Before the Town by Paul Klee, shown at 30 × 40 in (76.2 × 101.6 cm) in Arber Natural, media room — Shown at 30 × 40 in (76.2 × 101.6 cm) · Framed paper, Arber Natural · Media room

Before the Town by Paul Klee, shown at 30 × 40 in (76.2 × 101.6 cm) as gallery-wrapped canvas, hotel guest room — Shown at 30 × 40 in (76.2 × 101.6 cm) · Gallery-wrapped canvas · Hotel guest room

Story

A row of vertical bands rendered in watercolor builds an abstract view of a landscape, with greens suggesting trees, browns standing for earth, and blues for sky, all held in subdued tones. The strips overlap and shift in width, giving the sense of a horizon broken into fragments rather than a single continuous scene. Paul Klee made this watercolor on paper, mounted on cardboard, in 1915, and it is held today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Klee, who lived from 1879 to 1940, worked within Expressionism, bringing a personal approach to color and form into this composition. One detail worth noticing is how the muted palette keeps the strips from feeling harsh, letting the green, brown, and blue bands blend into a quiet, unified impression of a town's edge rather than a sharply defined place.