Paul Klee, “The Goldfish”, Oil and Watercolor on Paper, Mounted on Cardboard, 1925, 69.2 x 49.6 cm, Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany
Paul Klee was one of the greatest colorists in the story of painting, and a skilled deployer of line. His gravest pictures may have an undercurrent of humor, and his powers of formal invention seem infinite. After making an early choice whether to pursue painting or music as a career, he became one of the most poetic and inventive of modern artists.
He taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau and then at the Düsseldorf Academy. Until his expulsion from Düsseldorf by the Nazis in 1933, Klee painted and drew on a very small scale, yet the small size of his pictures does not affect their internal greatness.
In 1977, a man, Hans joachim Bohlmann, threw acid at this work while it was on view at Germany’s Hamburg Kunsthalle Museum. Though damaged, the work was able to be restored.