Around the Fish
Paul Klee
German, born Switzerland. 1879–1940
1926
A compact, dreamlike scene painted in oil and tempera on canvas mounted on cardboard that places a precisely hatched fish on a deep blue platter and surrounds it with playful symbols and geometric signs to explore a personal visual language.
You first fix on the silvery, engraved scales and concentric eye of the fish within a luminous cobalt oval, then the eye wanders out to orbiting moons, red arrows, pale cylinders and spare botanical marks that float against a velvety black field.
Made in 1926, the work exemplifies Klee’s reduction of forms to signs and rhythms—melding drawing, notation and poetic imagination—and helped open modernism to graphic, almost musical approaches to abstraction.
Medium
Oil and tempera on canvas mounted on cardboard
Dimensions
18 3/8 x 25 1/8" (46.7 x 63.8 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund
Accession
271.1939
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
