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Introduction
Paul Klee’s Before the Town (1915) stands as a seminal work in the artist’s early explorations of abstraction and symbolism. Painted on paper mounted to cardboard, this piece marks Klee’s first major foray into the tension between representational reference and pure pictorial invention. Striking for its vertical bands of color interspersed with geometric forms, Before the Town subtly evokes architectural structures, pathways, and the liminal space that precedes entry into an inhabited environment. By synthesizing color contrasts, rhythmic patterning, and minimal line work, Klee transforms an ostensibly simple composition into a profound meditation on memory, anticipation, and the process of artistic creation itself.
Historical Context
The year 1915 found Europe engulfed in the cataclysm of World War I. At twenty-six, Paul Klee was conscripted into military service, an experience that both disrupted his artistic practice and deepened his introspection. Prior to the war, Klee had participated in the Expressionist circle Die Blaue Vier and shown work alongside Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. The outbreak of hostilities, however, curtailed group exhibitions and forced many artists into isolation. In the uneasy calm between transported garrisons, Klee returned to Switzerland, where he created Before the Town. The painting reflects the paradox of war’s rupture and the human desire to rebuild, to seek sanctuary, and to envision environments at once imagined and remembered.
Artistic Influences and Transitional Phase
Klee’s early encounters with children’s drawings, medieval manuscripts, and non-Western art forms such as Egyptian tomb paintings informed his approach to pictorial space. He admired the directness of pre-Renaissance imagery—flat color fields outlined in simple lines—and the inventiveness found in so-called primitive art, with its abstracted symbols and ritual significance. Around 1915, Klee began to integrate these lessons with Expressionist color sensibilities, resulting in works that straddle figuration and abstraction. Before the Town emerges at the nexus of these influences: its repeated color bars recall stained-glass windows and textile patterns, its spare geometric shapes resonate like ideographs, and its overall rhythm hints at musical composition.
Composition and Structural Rhythm
At first glance, Before the Town is constructed of ten to twelve vertical segments, each filled with a distinct color or textured wash. The bands vary in width, hue, and opacity, creating a visual beat akin to musical measures. Across the bottom, a narrow horizontal strip anchors the composition, suggesting a foundation or horizon line. Scattered within and between the verticals are simple geometric motifs—a small triangle, an arch, a black square—implying doorways, rooftops, or windows. The arrangement of these forms balances predictability and surprise: viewers anticipate the regular cadence of color bands, yet delight in the subtle asymmetries and shifting transparencies that prevent monotony.
Palette and Color Dynamics
Klee’s palette in Before the Town spans warm ochres and siennas, cool blues and violets, and deep earth tones. The central bands feature saturated oranges and reds that glow against surrounding greys and muted purples, while the edges retreat into somber brown and indigo. Klee applied watercolor washes in layers, adjusting pigment concentration to achieve areas of both intense chromatic presence and delicate translucence. The interplay of warm and cool colors animates the surface: the warm segments appear to advance, suggesting sunlight or human warmth, while the cool bands recede, hinting at shadow, distance, or the encroaching twilight before entering a town. This dynamic modulation of depth through color fields exemplifies Klee’s early mastery of mood and spatial suggestion without resorting to perspectival illusion.
Symbolic Resonance of Geometric Forms
The sparse geometric accents in Before the Town—a single red triangle, a black square, a small semicircular arch—carry multiple associations. The red triangle perched at the lower right might denote a distant roof or a directional arrow pointing inward. The black square within a grey band evokes a closed window or gate, alluding to barriers that guard entry. The arch shape, nestled in an amber stripe, recalls a doorway or tunnel, a portal through which one must pass to enter the inhabited space. By stripping these architectural elements to their barest abstraction, Klee invites viewers to project personal memories of thresholds, boundaries, and the emotional weight of crossing from one realm into another.
Spatial Ambiguity and the Liminal Zone
One of Klee’s great achievements in Before the Town is creating a sense of neither-here-nor-there space. The painting does not depict a clear street, a specific building, or a recognizable facade. Instead, it conjures the zone “before the town”—that transitional strip of farmland, roadside, or open field that separates the wild from the nurtured world of human habitation. The vertical bands could be trees, fence posts, or the shadows of buildings at dawn; equally, they could be abstract markers of time and emotion. This deliberate spatial ambiguity resonates with human experience: we all know the feeling of pausing at a threshold, of gathering in the unformed space between departure and arrival, anticipation and memory.
Line and Gesture
Although dominated by washes, the painting incorporates minimal line work executed with fine brush or nib. Thin strokes delineate the geometric motifs and trace gentle outlines around selected bands, heightening their individual significance. In places, Klee drew faint pencil guidelines—perhaps vestiges of his layout plan—revealing the artist’s process in real time. These lines, almost ghostly, remind viewers that the painting is both an artifact and a living act of creation. The sparing use of gesture underscores Klee’s belief that each mark must count; there is no superfluous brushstroke, only purposeful action that shapes the viewer’s perception.
Technical Execution and Medium
Before the Town is rendered in watercolor and gouache on paper mounted to board. Klee often began with light washes of color to establish tone and atmosphere, then layered denser pigment to form the vertical bars. He employed techniques such as dry brush to impart texture, wet-on-wet blending to soften edges, and scrubbing to reveal earlier layers of pigment. The fully mounted paper provided a stable support, allowing Klee to work vigorously without warping. Tiny flecks of white pigment and scratches in the paint surface attest to his tactile engagement—he frequently lifted off pigment or inscribed into semi-dry layers to achieve desired effects.
Relationship to Klee’s Writings on Art
Shortly after creating Before the Town, Klee developed his pedagogical theories that would later appear in the Pedagogical Sketchbook (1925). There, he posited that painting is a “making visible of the invisible” and that line and color constitute the grammar of visual language. In Before the Town, one sees these ideas in practice: the visible bands and shapes are signifiers of unseen emotional states—anticipation, memory, the boundary between wild and tamed. The work also demonstrates his concept of “taking a line for a walk,” insofar as the vertical bars act as drawn lines extended into full color planes, walking across the surface to map an intangible form of space.
Psychological and Poetic Interpretation
Beyond its formal qualities, Before the Town resonates on a psychological level. The painting captures the emotional tenor of pausing before entry: the heart quickens, the mind weighs past trials, hopes, and fears. The warm orange channels could signify the heart’s urging, while the cool greys and purples embody caution or introspection. The contrasting colors, placed side by side, mirror the human capacity for conflicting emotions when facing significant transitions. Klee’s abstraction thus does not distance viewers; instead, it offers a poetic mirror, inviting personal projection and emotional engagement.
Influence on Later Abstraction and Modern Art
Though often overshadowed by Klee’s later, more fully abstract works, Before the Town helped pioneer key strategies in modern abstraction: non-objective space, color-field modulation, and minimal symbolic reference. Artists of the mid-twentieth century—Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and Ellsworth Kelly—would advance the color field tradition, while movements like Hard-Edge Painting would echo Klee’s crisp demarcation of color zones. Before the Town stands as an early exemplar of how abstraction can convey narrative and emotional depth without depictive representation, influencing generations of painters to think beyond literalism.
Exhibition History and Critical Reception
This painting first entered public view in postwar exhibitions of Klee’s work, where critics noted its innovative fusion of architecture and landscape cues. Scholars have since highlighted Before the Town as a turning point in Klee’s career, marking his shift from representational sketches and caricatures to the fully developed abstract idiom he would teach at the Bauhaus. Major retrospectives at institutions such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Zentrum Paul Klee have showcased Before the Town, underscoring its significance in the narrative of modern art. Critical essays emphasize the work’s nuanced balance of color, form, and symbolic resonance.
Preservation and Conservation
Preserving early watercolors presents unique challenges, as pigments may fade and paper can become brittle. Before the Town is kept in climate-controlled conditions to regulate humidity and prevent discoloration. Curators periodically assess the painting for evidence of pigment migration or paper acidity. High-resolution digitization has allowed scholars to study Klee’s brushwork and layering methods in unprecedented detail. Conservation efforts focus on stabilizing the mounting board and managing light exposure, ensuring that future generations can experience the full subtlety of Klee’s palette and compositional finesse.
Conclusion
Paul Klee’s Before the Town (1915) remains a landmark in the evolution of abstract art. Through its vertical color bands, geometric signifiers, and textured washes, the painting evokes the emotional and spatial threshold that precedes entering an inhabited environment. Synthesizing influences from medieval art, children’s drawings, and Expressionist color theory, Klee created a work that transcends literal depiction to probe universal themes of anticipation, memory, and transition. Over a century later, Before the Town continues to captivate viewers with its harmonious interplay of color, form, and poetic resonance, standing as a testament to Klee’s enduring vision of art as a bridge between the tangible and the imagined.