With the Dot

Paul Klee, the Swiss-German painter whose whimsical, deeply theoretical work bridged Expressionism, Surrealism, and abstraction, created 'With the Dot' in 1916, the second year of the First World War. Klee had been conscripted into the German army in 1916 and was serving in a support role at an airbase in Gersthofen, Bavaria. Despite the war, this period saw some of his most inventive graphic work, as he continued to develop the symbolic vocabulary that would culminate in his famous Bauhaus teaching. Executed in pen and black ink, 'With the Dot' is a deceptively simple drawing: an arrangement of abstract shapes—triangles, arcs, circles, and lines—in a balanced, almost architectural composition. The "dot" of the title appears as a small circle near the center of the composition, functioning as a visual anchor. Klee's line is precise and playful, varying in thickness and direction to create a sense of movement and rhythm. The drawing feels like a notation from a private language—a visual poem in which shapes and marks carry meaning beyond their literal forms. 1916 was a year of formal innovation for Klee. Deeply influenced by his encounters with the work of Robert Delaunay (whose color theory he admired), the Blaue Reiter group (with whom he had exhibited in 1912), and the Tunisian watercolors he had made with August Macke in 1914, Klee was developing his personal theory of form. He wrote in his diary of "taking a line for a walk"—the idea that drawing could be an autonomous, improvisational act, not bound by representation. 'With the Dot' embodies this ideal: the marks on the page create their own reality, independent of external reference. Klee's wartime drawings, produced while he was nominally a soldier, are remarkable for their refusal to engage with the horror of the trenches. Instead, Klee retreated into a world of pure form and imagination, creating small, intimate works that affirmed the possibility of beauty and meaning in the face of destruction. This drawing, modest in scale but infinite in suggestion, is a testament to art's power to resist despair.

'With the Dot' exemplifies Klee's revolutionary approach to drawing as a form of independent visual thinking, unbound from representation. It was during the war years that Klee formulated the theoretical principles that would make him one of the most influential teachers at the Bauhaus. His concept of "taking a line for a walk" liberated drawing from its traditional mimetic role and paved the way for automatic drawing, Surrealism, and abstract expressionism. Klee's work during this period directly influenced artists from Joan Miró to Cy Twombly.

A small but mighty drawing from Klee's wartime years, 'With the Dot' transforms simple ink marks into a world of visual wit and formal invention—a cornerstone of modernist abstraction.