Abstract

With reference mainly to Paul Klee’s Ad marginem from 1930 , this article focuses on space—namely, on the question of how space can be made visible as such. Having figures, lines, and the background establishing an intense interplay of transparency, Klee’s work refrains from displaying the mere spatiality of objects. It is this interplay of transparent figures entangled with their background that are withdrawing but not disappearing that creates an empty space that is as such limited and unoccupied. Compared to a garden, the idea of limiting and simultaneously making visible an eminent openness is stressed. Referring, furthermore, to observations like Rilke’s poem Shawl or to Toyo Ito’s comments on Klee’s work, this article aims to display the eminent space character becoming visible in the painter’s œuvre