Description
Paul Klee's Red Globe features a colorful display of geometric shapes that appear to float in the air, offering a unique image. Its cityscape background complements the vision of vibrant shades of red, yellow, blue, and green.
The persistent changes in style, technique, and theme indicate a deliberate and highly amusing evasion of aesthetic categorization. However, it is virtually impossible to confuse a work by Klee with that of any other artist, although many have emulated his idiosyncratic and enigmatic art. So accepted was his work that Klee was embraced over the years by the Blue Rider group, the European dada contingent, the Surrealists, and the Bauhaus faculty, with whom he taught for a decade in Weimar and Dessau.
As part of the early 20th century avant-garde, Klee formulated a personal abstract pictorial language. His vocabulary, which oscillates freely between the figurative and the unrepresentative, communicates through a unique symbology, more expressive than descriptive. Klee conveyed his meanings through an often capricious fusion of form and text, frequently writing the titles of his works on the mats on which they are mounted and including words within the images themselves. Such is the case in The Bavarian Don Giovanni, in which Klee indicates his admiration for Mozart's opera, as well as for certain contemporary sopranos, while hinting at his own amorous pursuits. A veiled self-portrait, the figure ascending the stairs is surrounded by five women's names, an allusion to the operatic scene in which Don Giovanni's servant Leporello recites a list of his master's 2,065 loves.
Citing Klee's confession that her “infatuation changed with each soubrette in the opera,” art historian K. Porter Aichele has identified the watercolor Emma and Thères as the singers Emma Carelli and Thérèse Rothauser. The others, Cenzl, Kathi, and Mari, refer to models with whom Klee had fleeting romantic interludes.
Although much of Klee's work is figurative, compositional design almost always preceded narrative association. The artist often transformed his experiments on tonal value and line into visual anecdotes. The Red Globe is both a group of delicately colored floating geometric shapes and an enchanting urban landscape.
Paul Klee masterfully implemented the cubist technique in the design of this painting. Deconstructed shapes and different points of view bring this abstract design to life. The use of oil and chalk on muslin helps bring out the rich colors and shows Klee's expertise in color theory.
Clean lines, bright colors and geometric shapes give The Red Balloon a life of its own The cubist technique executed by Paul Klee is unmistakable in its execution. the red balloon it is a display of abstract style and structure, while its whimsical imagery seems to amuse the viewer.