1918 -1940 · Growth, sign, color and imaginary botany

Klee does not copy the flower: he observes the principle of growth to invent graphic organisms where stem, spiral, house and color are transformed into each other.

The flower occupies a privileged place in Paul Klee between observed nature and invention. His teaching at the Bauhaus analyzes growth as a process: a point becomes a line, the line branches, the shape opens and the color unfolds. Floral works make these transformations visible without reproducing exact botany. In Flower Myth from 1918, plant, star and sign float in a dark space like the elements of an intimate cosmology. White flower in the garden or Flowers in pots maintain a relationship with the cultivated place, but simplify stem and corolla into rhythmic units. Two red flowers and Spiral screw flowers II push the invention further: the flower becomes a mechanism, a family of forms or musical notation. The sometimes very precise titles guide the game without closing it. Even Autumn Flower, produced in the late period, combines seasonal fragility and assertive line. At Klee, the image therefore does not choose between figuration and abstraction. It shows how a natural form can become a sign while keeping memory of its growth. The "Flowers of Paul Klee" selection notably compares Autumn Flower and Flowers in pots. Its reading favors color.

Klee's flower grows in the painting like an idea: the line branches, the color matches and the sign preserves the energy of life.