With the two lost ones

By 1938 Klee was living back in Switzerland and painting in a broad, blunt hand very different from his earlier fine lines. Here two figures, the two lost ones of the title, are set down as thick black signs, almost like letters in an unknown alphabet, against a muted ground. The materials are humble and telling: wallpaper paste and paint over newsprint, glued to cardboard, barely 49 centimetres across. He was extraordinarily productive in these late years, working fast and simply, and the heavy black marks let him say a great deal with very few strokes. The two figures drift apart across the surface, held in place only by the dark scaffold around them.