Paul Klee’s first solo exhibition in the United States opened in 1924 at an upscale gallery on 57th Street in Manhattan, two blocks south of Central Park. Art critic Henry McBride reviewed the show in The New York Sun:
The charm of his color and the delicacy of his lines attract many to him. But what does Klee say? Ah, that is the question. Is it only something whimsical? Or beneath the whimsicality, is he saying something profound?
Excellent question, Mr. McBride. To answer it, I will start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.
Swiss-born Paul Klee began his journey at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany. After graduation he crisscrossed Europe, studying the Renaissance Masters, the French Impressionists, and the Cubists.
His travels eventually led to the Paris studio of Robert and Sonia Delaunay, where he encountered a new style of modern art known as Orphism. The trio talked about its blend of color and geometry, including the way complimentary colors like red and green create the impression of depth on a flat surface.
Upon his return to Munich, Klee became an active contributor to The Blue Rider Almanac—a seminal book of essays and illustrations being put together by avant-garde artists Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. This collaboration would fundamentally change the trajectory of Klee’s career.
Can you enjoy art without decoding it?
Kandinsky believed that art, like music, can be enjoyed without being “read.” The idea resonated deeply with Klee, who could play the violin well enough by age ten to perform with the Bern Orchestra. Ultimately, Klee’s musical instincts led him to create a new style of painting that prioritized symbolic expression over realistic description. He said it was “abstract, with memories.”
Over time, his pictorial vocabulary grew increasingly sophisticated. In the catalogue introduction to one of Klee’s gallery shows, the distinguished Mexican muralist Diego Rivera wrote:
Paul Klee’s new paintings contain all the science of the great masters and all the freshness and genius of children.
This was high praise. For artists like Rivera, Matisse, and Picasso, the unfiltered energy of non-academic art was so compelling that it made the gilt-framed canvases in museums seem almost counterfeit.
How to read a modern masterpiece
Shortly after his 56th birthday, Klee began to exhibit the symptoms of scleroderma, a rare and incurable disease that hardens the skin. Despite severe physical constraints, he continued to paint, creating some of the most poignant images of his career.
His 1938 masterpiece, Insula Dulcamara, was completed just two years before he died. The title contains Latin references to dulcis (sweet) and amarus (bitter), perhaps referring to solanum dulcamara, an herb whose anti-inflammatory properties were rumored to ease scleroderma.
The title may also reflect the artist’s bittersweet emotional state as he confronted his own mortality.
To create this uncharacteristically large work—measuring nearly six feet wide—Klee glued newsprint over burlap to serve as a ground. He then applied smudges of peach, blue, and spring green to evoke the warmth and light of a Mediterranean landscape.
Across the top, a long, black calligraphic line suggests a shoreline. Above it, the moon rises, a steamship glides by, and the moon sets: Time passes, people pass on.
A ghostly white face holds the composition in balance. Does the P-shaped figure represent Paul Klee? If so, why is he standing in a puddle of water? Is the ailing artist getting wet feet?
A bittersweet island
Perhaps Insula Dulcamara is a modern interpretation of Titian’s famous painting The Three Ages of Man. Might the squiggly creature on the left be a baby crawling on all fours? Might the P-shaped figure be an adult staring into a tunnel at the afterlife—represented by a circle of radiant white light?
Who knows? I could write ten completely different interpretations of this work and Klee liked it that way. “If you portray life too literally, you wind up in a wasteland,” he cautioned his students at the Bauhaus School of Art and Design.
He initially titled this painting Calypso’s Island after a story in Homer’s Odyssey. In the story, a beautiful nymph named Calypso holds the Greek hero Odysseus captive on an island for seven years. But she is unable to quell his longing for his wife, even after offering him immortality “with benefits.” In the end—with a little help from the gods—Odysseus departs the island and makes his way back home.
Ultimately, Klee rejected the title Calypso’s Island because he felt it was too on the nose. “My latest work does point in that direction, though,” he told his friend, the art critic Will Grohmann. “It says the time has come.”
An isolated yet pivotal artist
The influential arts writer Clement Greenberg once said, “Everyone was learning from Klee, whether they were conscious of it or not.” Greenberg later confessed he didn’t really understand modern art until he came across pictures like Klee’s Twittering Machine—an astonishingly prescient image of mechanical birds whose twitter lures its victims into a pit.
Paul Klee died in 1940, just months after a special exhibition of his large-scale works—including Insula Dulcamara—opened in Zurich. Art historian Carola Giedion-Welcker recalls opening night:
Monumental images glowed like the characters of a Runic language, revealing a style of drawing that was linear, black, thick—like great wooden beams set on a colored background.
I understood that a new symbolic language had come to its maturity in these large-scale works, and that they were, perhaps, Klee’s most original contribution to the art of the 20th century.
Postscript: If you happen to be in Houston…
Explore Picasso-Klee-Matisse: Masterpieces from the Museum Berggruen now thru September 13, 2026. This special exhibition shows paintings and drawings by Paul Klee alongside sculptures and vibrant canvas compositions by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.