Magic Garden (Zaubergarten)
Oil on plaster-filled wire mesh
52.9 x 44.9 cm
March 1926
Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
The surface Klee creates with the medium of Magic Garden resembles that of a primordial substance worn and textured by its own history. A cosmic eruption seems to have spewed forth forms that are morphologically related but differentiated into various genera. Although excused from the laws of gravity, each of these forms occupies a designated place in a new universe, simultaneously as fixed and mobile as the orbits of planets or the nuclei of organic cells. Klee’s cosmic statements are gleefully irreverent; he writes of his work: “Ethical gravity rules, along with hobgoblin laughter at the learned ones.” (1)
Lucy Flint
(1)Apud, W. Grohmann, Paul Klee, New York, 1954, p. 191.