Red Balloon

Red Balloon joins Castle and Sun in developing abstract cityscape scenes

Klee's use of oil and chalk on muslin highlights the colors in the painting. This shows Klee's superb mastery of color theory. His expert use of colors, lines and shapes helped to make the red balloon come alive.

The cubist technique, the abstract style and the structure create whimsical images that amuse viewers. Klee's works are filled with wit, dreams, music and poetry. Mixed in with such content is also children's and primitive art as well as surrealism and cubism.

Klee did not want to be artistically categorized. In order to minimize this,he kept changing his content, technique and style. Even so, Klee's work was always recognized as having been done by him regardless of other artists' attempts to copy it.

His work was so accepted that, as the years went by, certain groups kept including him. The Blue Rider Group, the European Dada Contingent and the Surrealists were some such branches. During the ten years that he taught at Weimer and Dessau, his faculty also appreciated his art.

Paul Klee painted the Red Balloon in 1922. The dimensions of the painting were 12 1/2 x 12 1/4 inches (31.7 x 31.1 cm). His particular use of a colorful display of geometric figures resulted in a unique image.

The painting's cityscape background respects the vision of vibrant shades of red, yellow, blue and green.

Importantly, Klee, an iconic artist, uses the cubist technique to masterfully get onlookers to quickly notice and to focus on the circular red balloon situated by itself on center stage. Different viewpoints and deconstructed shapes help to bring this abstract design to life.