Paul Klee (1879-1940)

Painted in 1937, Winterschlaf, or "Hibernation," depicts a sleeping female figure integrated into the forms of a winter landscape. Using a bare minimum of means characteristic of his late style, Klee here constructs a magical realm with only a few cipher-like lines and curves set in a delicate mottled field of color. Part landscape, part figure, part abstract part, calligraphy or hieroglyph, the painting's magical fusion of form, line and color conjures an ethereal world of winter-sleep invigorated only by the vibrant but tiny red heart beating at the center of a mound that also serves as the sleeping woman's stomach.

A charmingly poetic visual expression of hibernation and a sleepy winter landscape, this exquisite work may also have held a poignant meaning for Klee himself, being one of an extensive number of paintings made after an enforced break from work due to illness throughout most of 1936 and the winter of 1937.