The artwork entitled “Flowers in Stone,” created by Paul Klee in 1939, is a watercolor painting that belongs to the Expressionist movement. The piece’s dimensions are 30.48 x 24.38 cm, and its genre is classified as a portrait. The artwork is part of the Felix Klee Collection located in Bern, Switzerland.
Describing the artwork, it presents an interplay of abstract shapes and shading that evoke the illusion of a figure. The subject is rendered with a sense of depth and ambiguity, characteristic of Klee’s style, especially in his later years. The use of watercolors offers a transparency that contrasts with the solidity suggested by the title. Although termed a portrait, the work strays from conventional representation, inviting the viewer to explore forms and colors as they converge into a semblance of a figure intertwined with its somewhat architectural environment. Delicate blue markings, possibly the ‘flowers’ alluded to in the title, punctuate the composition, introducing an element of rhythm and adding a hint of color to the predominantly earth-toned palette. The artwork’s composition balances the abstract with the representational, embodying the spirit of Expressionism where emotional experience takes precedence over the replication of reality.
