Promontorio Ph.

1933 was the year everything closed in on Klee in Germany. The Nazis had come to power, he lost his teaching post in Dusseldorf, and his house was searched. Oddly, it was also one of his most productive years. He made close to 500 works, many of them small and rapid like this one, before the family packed up and left for Switzerland at the end of December. This sheet is watercolour on a thin plywood panel rather than paper. He gave it a clipped Italian title, Promontorio, and reduced the headland it names to a few floating planes of colour laid across the wood.