Portrait of Mrs P. in the South

In 1924, Paul Klee spent his summer vacation in Sicily which provided him with the subjects for several watercolors that captured the color, light, and mood of a specific geographical location and a cast of characters. This portrait is a good-natured caricature of a northern lady whose absurd hat insufficiently shielded her from the intensity of the Mediterranean sun. The heart shape on Frau P.’s chest, appears frequently in Klee’s work, sometimes representing a mouth, nose, or torso. The motif bridged the organic and inorganic worlds for the artist by symbolizing life forces while serving as a “mediating form between circle and rectangle." Klee was born in 1879, in Switzerland. By 1911, he became involved with the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), founded by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc in 1911. Klee and Kandinsky became lifelong friends, and the support of the older painter provided much-needed encouragement. Until then, Klee had worked in relative isolation, experimenting with various styles and media, such as making caricatures and Symbolist drawings, and later producing small works on paper mainly in black and white. His work was also influenced by the Cubism of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, as well as the abstract translucent color planes of Robert Delaunay.