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Great Paintings Explained: Ad Marginem by Paul Klee
A mystical vision inspired by a trip to Egypt
Here, a red sphere floats above a garden of earthly delights. Plants and flowers sprout inward from all sides. A large bird roams the upper edge of the painting, whilst all along the margins curious organic forms multiply.
This painting was made by the Swiss-born German artist Paul Klee in 1930. In the previous year, he’d travelled through Egypt where the sun’s intense rays and the “paradise of plants” left a lasting impression.
The texture of the image, like so many of Klee’s images, has the magnetic grain of something old, the patina of something encrusted, lambent and blooming. With the feel of a fairy tale, the scene opens up like a tiny theatre.
Klee was relentlessly experimental in his use and combination of materials, and his methods of constructing pictures often involved multiple stages and processes. This picture was painted in detailed watercolour over which he brushed a layer of varnish, thereby creating the grainy lacquered effect that unifies the image and gives it its burnished glow.
