Works

›Fire at Full Moon‹ is one of the artist’s most systematic works. On the basis of a theory of pictorial forms he had been developing since 1920, Klee placed various large color fields and color values against and next to one another. In doing so, the question of relations between sense, form and color of the surface was of central importance. Two color fields, a yellow disc and an irregular red cross, form the poles in the diversely designed, landscape-like composition, whose graphic elements create an effect of perspective in certain places. ›Fire at Full Moon‹ was probably painted in the summer of 1933. In a letter to his wife of September 1933, Klee wrote: »At the moment I am working purely with color and make few light-dark contrasts, none if possible, but I haven't succeeded; so I play around with the ground tone, here gray, then red and later blue. Generally it comes out well in the end, but it is quite tiring and the time passes more quickly than usual.«
The title ›Fire at Full Moon‹ raises some questions as to interpretation, for example concerning a reference to National Socialism and Klee's suspension from his teaching post at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie in 1933 – an interpretation supported by a lot of drawings (and their enigmatic titles) made in the same year.