Dry Cooler Garden

Paul Klee joined the faculty of the Bauhaus in Weimar in January 1921, and this watercolor belongs to his first year there. At the Bauhaus he was simultaneously a Form master across several workshops and a theorist developing ideas about color, form, and the pictorial plane that he published in lecture notes and, eventually, in his landmark Pedagogical Sketchbook (1925). His color-gradation works of 1921–1923 — among which this piece belongs — were closely tied to his Bauhaus teaching on color theory. Klee maintained a meticulous personal catalogue of all his works throughout his career, assigning each a year and sequential number; this painting carries the designation 1921, 83, meaning it was the eighty-third work he catalogued in that year. The sheet is bordered with silver paper strips and mounted on cardboard — a combination of materials Klee used in a number of works from this period. The work is held in the Kupferstichkabinett (Department of Prints and Drawings) at the Kunstmuseum Basel, one of the largest and oldest print and drawing collections in the world.