Nomad Mother

Klee made this in Bern in 1940, the last year of his life, and the months he had for work that year were few. In February the Kunsthaus in Zurich opened an exhibition of his new pictures, and in May he left Bern for a sanatorium in Ticino, the Italian-speaking south of Switzerland.

The mother is put together from roughly brushed tiles of opaque watercolour, each fenced in by black crayon, and her head is as large as the rest of her. A red shape around her nose can be read as part of her face or as a second, smaller head, the child she seems to hold. Her eyes do not match. One is a circle with a slash through it, the other a half dome held open by a short black upright, like a prop under a lid.

Klee's German title is Nomaden Mutter. The sheet is a little under 30 centimetres tall.