Redgreen and Violet-Yellow Rhythms

Blocks of color spread across the surface in shifting rectangles of red, green, yellow, orange, and teal, their edges overlapping like panes of tinted glass. Scattered among the shapes are small dark forms suggesting plant life, breaking up the geometry with organic touches. The piece, titled Redgreen and Violet-Yellow Rhythms, was made in 1920 using oil and ink on cardboard, and it is held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, having come into the collection through the Berggruen Klee holdings. Paul Klee (1879–1940), a German-Swiss artist, was associated with the Bauhaus movement. Looking closely, the composition rewards attention to how the dark plant-like marks interrupt the rhythm of the colored blocks, giving the abstract grid a quiet sense of growth and movement beneath its structured surface.