Geläute

The German title means the pealing of bells, the sound of them ringing together. Klee gave it to this small watercolour in 1928, while he was teaching at the Bauhaus in Dessau, the year he would close by sailing to Egypt. He liked titles that name something you would hear or feel rather than something you simply see, leaving you to find the sound inside the marks. He worked in transparent watercolour, letting the colour pool and soften into the paper. The sheet is now in the Kunstmuseum Basel.