Black, Still in Place

Klee painted this in 1940, the last year of his life, and it belongs to a group of late works unlike anything he had made before. For years his pictures had been small, bright and finely built. Now, his body stiffening under scleroderma, a disease that slowly hardens the skin, he worked in broad, heavy strokes of thick black over muted colour. The title reads almost like a caption for what you see: a black form that has not moved, still in place. These late paintings are full of such blunt marks, bars and signs that look like a private handwriting. He died that June, at 60, having made several hundred works in this final burst.