骑驴者

In April 1914 August Macke sailed to Tunisia with two painter friends, Paul Klee and Louis Moilliet, and spent about two weeks soaking up the light of Tunis, Hammamet and Kairouan. He came home with 38 watercolors, this donkey and rider among them, the colour laid down in loose blocks with no drawing underneath, the wall behind dissolving into the same warm patches as the figures. That trip has become one of the famous episodes of modern art, the fortnight when Klee decided that colour and he were one. For Macke it was almost the end. He was called up when the war broke out that August and killed in France in September, 27 years old, a few months after these bright, unhurried sheets were made.