Paul Klee. Fire in the Evening

Paul Klee

Fire in the Evening

1929

Oil on cardboard

Not on view

A red opaque rectangle stands out among bands of muted browns, greens, violets, and blues, which dynamically interact to suggest built structures or geographic formations. Klee's trip to Egypt in the winter of 1928-29 inspired a number of striated compositions, a response in part to the stratified cliffs of the Nile Valley and the long strips of tilled fields he saw there. These works "moved far from Nature," he said, "and found their way back to reality." While the work is apparently abstract, the variation within the simple formal palette of line and color constructs depth and space and even evokes a fire aflame in a desert at day's end.

Gallery label from

2006.

Medium Oil on cardboard
Dimensions 13 3/8 x 13 1/4" (33.8 x 33.3 cm)
Credit Mr. and Mrs. Joachim Jean Aberbach Fund
Object number 153.1970
Department Painting and Sculpture

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