Coming into Bloom

Coming into Bloom, from 1934, is made from nothing but small blocks of colour set side by side, and yet the title asks you to see them as flowers on the point of opening. Klee spent much of his last decade on these grids of coloured squares, testing how far pure colour could carry a feeling with almost no drawing at all. The blocks run from deep blue and brown into reds, pinks and a few flecks of white, and the warmth spreading through the cooler squares is the blooming the title promises. Nothing in it is a flower in any literal sense. He is betting that a patch of red beside a patch of blue can do the work of a petal, if he places it exactly right.