Historic Ground (Historischer Boden)

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FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

In this watercolor painted in 1939, a year before his death, Paul Klee addresses the theme of distant time. Below a horizontal line, a cluster of jumbled forms evokes ancient or prehistoric symbols. During the 1930s, the decorated walls of Paleolithic caves were becoming increasingly well known; watercolor copies and photographic prints of the cave images featured in the exhibition Prehistoric Rock Pictures in Europe and Africa , presented in Frankfurt in 1936 and at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1937.

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