Im Lande Edelstein

The title leads 'into the land of precious stones', a place that exists only in the picture. Klee drew it mostly in pen, a fine web of lines over pale washes of colour, dividing the surface into small faceted cells like the inside of a gem or a mineral seen in cross-section. He made it in 1929, working small, barely 22 by 29 centimetres, in the patient graphic manner he loved, where a whole imaginary country is built line by line. There is no story to read, only a landscape of crystalline compartments to wander through, which is exactly what the invented place-name invites you to do.