Out of fear

Klee thought of himself as a draughtsman before anything else, and for every painting he finished there are many more works on paper in pencil and ink. This is one of them, a small pencil drawing from 1930 that he titled Out of fear. The name points at a feeling rather than an object, which was his habit throughout these years. Drawing was where he worked out ideas most freely and cheaply, filling sheet after sheet in the studio between his teaching duties at the Bauhaus in Dessau. It now belongs to the Kunstmuseum Basel.