Insula Dulcamara

An island of lines and signs

Across a wide field of pale pinks, greens and blues, heavy black lines turn, double back and sometimes stop abruptly. A central form can look like a face, a letter or a vessel; a long curve can suggest an island’s coast, a snake or simply the movement of a brush. Paul Klee’s Insula dulcamara is large enough for its signs to be seen across a room, yet close looking does not make them settle into one story. The Latin title, often translated “Bittersweet Island,” makes the painting feel like a place while leaving open what or who might inhabit it.^[1][2][3]

Klee made the work in 1938. The Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern gives its annual work number as 1938,481 (C 1) and its size as 88 × 176 cm. Its current material description is unusually specific: oil and coloured paste paint on newsprint on jute over a stretcher, with original frame strips. The ordinary printed paper, textile support and broad horizontal format are part of the picture’s construction, not just an incidental base for mysterious marks.^[1]

Contents

1. Which painting is Insula dulcamara?
2. How do the lines and colours work together?
3. What does “bittersweet island” suggest?
4. Was it first called Calypso’s Island?
5. Can the black signs be read as writing?
6. Is there a figure of death or illness?
7. How should we look at the original materials?
8. Looking again

Which painting is Insula dulcamara?

The painting belongs to the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern. The Zentrum’s German, English, French and Italian Foundation pages identify the same 1938,481 (C 1) work and repeat its dimensions and layered medium. 481 is Klee’s number within his 1938 output; C 1 is an additional collection notation, not a second date. The title is Latin, while older English catalogues have often printed an initial capital on Dulcamara. Neither typography turns the work into a different painting.^[1]

Older MoMA catalogues call its lender Kunstmuseum Bern, Paul Klee Foundation. That name reflects institutional history: the Paul Klee Foundation was based at Kunstmuseum Bern until the end of 2004 and entered the Zentrum Paul Klee Foundation in 2005. It is not evidence that a separate version travelled between two owners. The earlier MoMA exhibition caption simply says “oil on newspaper, mounted on burlap,” an abbreviated historical description. The current Bern record supplies the more precise oil-and-paste paint, newsprint, jute, stretcher and original frame-strip account.^[1][2][4]

At nearly two metres across, the work is exceptional in Klee’s practice. A MoMA exhibition catalogue, printed in the 1970s, places it in a group of seven large horizontal paintings of 1938 and calls it the most expansive and frieze-like among them. Some later accounts call it Klee’s largest painting. The measured size and membership in the seven-work group are more secure than a global superlative, which would require a complete comparison with the catalogue raisonné. The scale already changes the experience: signs that might be intricate and small in another Klee work become broad painted events here.^[1][2]

How do the lines and colours work together?

A broad, softly varied field carries thick black strokes. Pale green and pink are especially noticeable, while cooler blue and warmer patches give parts of the surface different weights. The colour does not form a conventional sky above land. There is no fixed horizon that forces every shape into a landscape. Red points and small dark marks interrupt the lighter intervals. Because the ground varies rather than staying blank, the heavy lines can appear both laid over it and absorbed into a single shifting surface.^[2][3]

One long black stroke travels across much of the upper half, bending into a loop and extending towards the right. Shorter bars, hooks, curls and angular signs appear beneath and around it. Near the centre, a tall, open structure contains small marks that resemble eyes and a nose. Calling it a “face” describes one compelling visual effect, but a viewer can also notice how the supposed head is built from a line that belongs to the larger network. The work encourages recognition and then makes that recognition unstable.^[3]

The extreme width leaves large intervals between some strokes. Those gaps matter as much as the dark pigment. They let a sign stand alone, while the eye continues to join it to a neighbour. A short black line may look like punctuation from a distance; close up, it is a shape with its own edge and thickness. The small local reproduction can show the general arrangement but cannot establish the exact paint order, whether newspaper type is visible under a particular passage, or how the original jute texture feels.^[1][3]

MoMA’s catalogue gives a useful account of this relation between scale and line. In the curator’s reading, Klee enlarged his formerly finer calligraphic marks as he worked on much broader surfaces. The heavy strokes therefore retain a life as shapes rather than disappearing into the contours of objects they describe. Pink, green and blue areas interlock with the superimposed drawing to make a fluid field. This is a formal account of what the work does, although the catalogue’s suggestion of a path towards postwar field painting is a later art-historical comparison, not a statement Klee made about future painters.^[2]

The same passage proposes possible outside stimuli, including Picasso and Miró, while explicitly leaving the question open. The painting does not need an assigned single influence to explain its bold lines. A more direct question for a viewer is how each stroke performs two jobs: it can be a mark on a surface and part of an image that briefly becomes legible. That double role helps explain why the work can seem playful and grave without requiring every dark element to become a fixed symbol.^[2][3]

What does “bittersweet island” suggest?

Insula is Latin for island. Dulcamara carries a sweet-and-bitter association and also occurs in the botanical name Solanum dulcamara, commonly called bittersweet nightshade. The title can therefore pull the viewer towards geography, taste, plant life or a mixed emotional state. It does not, by itself, show which of those Klee meant to illustrate. Red spots have sometimes been compared with berries, but a berry reading is an interpretation of the marks, not a species identification or proof that the artist used a particular herb.^[1][5]

Another path runs through Dr Dulcamara, the travelling vendor in Donizetti’s opera L’elisir d’amore. MoMA’s catalogue offers this operatic connection as a way of thinking about the painting’s odd mixture of lightness and mystery. The character does not inhabit an island in the opera, so the pairing is itself curious. It is a later curator’s title reading rather than a documentary explanation by Klee. The title’s ability to sustain unrelated associations helps make it more intriguing than a straightforward label such as “Island.”^[2]

The botanical route has sometimes been pushed much further. A French art-magazine account suggests that Klee used bittersweet nightshade medicinally and put its red berries into the picture. That article provides no medical correspondence or treatment record for the claim. The work’s title and red dots cannot establish a therapy, and the page does not assign one to Klee. The same article usefully documents how the painting has been received through plants, illness, exile and coded writing, but those themes need separate evidence before they become biography.^[5][6]

There is no need to choose between a literal island and an abstract arrangement before looking. If the broad curve is taken as a coast, other marks might become inhabitants, moons or a ship. If the curve is taken as drawn movement, the same forms remain active without a shore. The title creates a productive expectation of place. The painting tests that expectation with signs whose scale and orientation do not resolve into a map.^[2][3]

Was it first called Calypso’s Island?

A widely repeated story links the work to Calypso, the island-dwelling figure in Homer’s Odyssey. The 1970s MoMA catalogue phrases it cautiously: someone suggested that Klee call the painting “Calypso’s Island,” but it became Insula dulcamara. Its note traces the anecdote to Will Grohmann’s 1954 book on Klee, p. 68. Chris Pike’s later article instead paraphrases Grohmann’s English translation as saying “Calypso’s Isle” was a working title Klee found too obvious. Those versions seem to draw on the same earlier account, not two independent records.^[2][7]

The distinction matters. A suggestion made to Klee, a working title in conversation and a title written in his own register are different kinds of evidence. The available owner caption gives Insula dulcamara; it does not show a preliminary Insel der Kalypso inscription. Without the artist’s register or Grohmann’s original page checked against his source, the painting should not be described as originally titled The Island of Calypso. The Calypso association is historically significant and worth exploring, but its precise status remains open.^[1][2][7]

MoMA reads a possible island with strange creatures or snakes, and a small ship moving between rising and setting moons. A viewer can test each proposed form against the painting. The ship is a small shape near the top, not an established illustration of Odysseus’s voyage. The large central form does not identify Calypso, Odysseus or another mythic character. A long summary of the Odyssey would tell us much more about Homer than about Klee’s particular lines. The title anecdote is best used to sharpen a question: why might the artist have kept a more ambiguous name?^[2][3]

Can the black signs be read as writing?

Klee often worked near the boundary between drawing and script. In Insula dulcamara, some thick forms are especially letter-like, and the central shape looks to many viewers like a capital P. That observation opens a line of scholarly debate, but it does not automatically yield a message. A painting can suggest writing without being a cipher with one solution.^[3][7][8]

In a 2014 article, Chris Pike argues that the dark marks make a pictorial signature spelling “Paul Klee.” His reading begins with the central P-like figure and adjoining shapes for Paul, then follows further resemblances to Klee’s handwritten signature, reversals and Arabic-script forms to build the surname. He also proposes phonetic and newspaper-text connections and interprets the whole work through identity, authorship and mortality. These are detailed, testable steps in a published argument. They are not a transcribed signature supplied by the Bern museum or a statement by Klee that he hid his name in the painting.^[7]

The published case is more complex than saying “there is a P.” The viewer must decide where one letter ends, in which direction to read, when a mark is reversed, and when a resemblance to another alphabet is meaningful. Pike’s author-uploaded article makes those choices visible. Its full painting image was withheld for copyright reasons, which is another reason this page does not reproduce his letter map from an uncleared photograph. A reader can follow the essay’s diagram and assess the proposed correspondences directly.^[7]

Oğuz Haşlakoğlu offered a direct counter-reading in a 2022 article in the Turkish journal Kaygı, published in English with a Turkish abstract. He accepts that several forms may be read as letters but rejects Pike’s move from Latin-letter Paul to a literal Arabic-script surname. Instead, he proposes that the marks encode the title, “Insula dulcamara,” in distorted Latin letters that resemble Arabic calligraphy. His central P-like form can also become a broken R in his mapping. The two scholars thus disagree on the text, reading path and role of script resemblance while working from many of the same painted forms.^[8]

Neither interpretation is proven by the existence of letter-like shapes alone. Both require selected turns, reversals and ambiguous boundaries. That does not make them worthless: they give precise ways to look at a work that keeps testing the line between sign and image. Their disagreement is a reason to present them as competing interpretations. The public page can explain what each proposes, where their paths diverge and what evidence would be needed to move from a plausible visual reading to a documented account of Klee’s method.^[7][8]

Haşlakoğlu extends his argument towards ideas of artistic identity and compares Klee’s process with Cézanne and later philosophy. Pike brings in the theory of the author’s signature. These larger claims belong to the works’ scholarly reception, not to the Bern collection caption. They should come after a reader has seen the simple formal problem at their heart: marks that act as independent painted shapes can suddenly resemble letters, and the words a viewer thinks they see depend on the path chosen across the canvas.^[3][7][8]

Is there a figure of death or illness?

Klee made the painting during his late Bern years, after his departure from Germany under National Socialism and while living with serious illness. Those historical circumstances are relevant, especially for a work whose large format and thickened line differ from many earlier sheets. They do not make the painting a medical diagram or prove that every pale patch refers to his body. The central face-like structure has been read as a person, a mask, a letter and a sign of mortality. Each reading must be identified as such.^[2][7][9]

The 2019 Portuguese-English Klee exhibition catalogue places this work among reduced, archaic-looking late signs and mentions a sense of approaching death. The interpretation belongs to later reception of the late work; it is not a confession made by Klee beside this painting. The Zentrum’s German easy-language material similarly asks whether a pale figure might be a sick person or death, using deliberately tentative language. Its questions model a useful way to keep visitors looking instead of handing them a supposed iconographic answer.^[9][10]

MoMA’s earlier catalogue puts more emphasis on line, format and surface. These accounts need not be forced into agreement. A painter confronting illness can still make active choices about scale, technique and ambiguity. Reducing the work to a farewell would also flatten its unexpected light colours and energetic black turns. Conversely, describing it only as a formal exercise would miss why later viewers have found the title and central figure emotionally charged.^[2][3][9]

How should we look at the original materials?

The owner’s material description gives newsprint beneath the paint and jute on the stretcher. Newsprint is not a conventional pristine art-paper surface; it brings ordinary printed matter into a work whose black marks can resemble another form of writing. That coincidence is suggestive, but it does not mean every visible letter of the original newspaper was chosen as part of an encoded message. Pike, for example, reads one reported type fragment as a further allusion. The actual fragment and layer relation require a high-quality, authorised image or examination of the original before this page can verify them.^[1][7]

The original frame strips are specifically named by the Zentrum. They belong to the current object record and should not vanish in a generic “oil on canvas” label. Kleisterfarbe is often rendered “coloured paste paint”; it is not the same as saying Klee simply painted with glue. The work’s materials let him combine a printed substrate, a rough textile base, thin colour fields and thick dark signs at a scale unusual for his practice.^[1][2]

The small reproduction introduces the composition but cannot establish fine texture or paint detail.^[1]

Looking again

Begin at the long upper curve and follow it across the painting. Then look at the central P-like form without naming it for a moment. Notice how several shorter marks stand apart from the network and how coloured intervals affect their weight. On another pass, try the island story, the botanical title, the operatic name and the scholars’ two incompatible reading paths. Each will make certain forms prominent and leave others unexplained.^[2][3][7][8]

That is the work’s strength. At 88 × 176 cm, Insula dulcamara gives Klee’s graphic signs an almost architectural reach, while preserving their capacity to turn from stroke into creature, letter, landscape or face. The Bern object record fixes its year, materials and physical scale. Its title and later interpretations invite possibilities, but none supplies an artist-authored key for every mark. For related reading, see Klee’s late work, materials and techniques and the separate 1940 Death and Fire, where letter forms are more openly legible.^[1][3][8]

Explore selected works from Klee’s much larger oeuvre. Titles without a link have an authenticated catalogue identity but no reviewed article yet.

Artworks directory

217 artworks

Search artworks Medium All media Drawing Painting Reset

Name	Date	Medium
A Gate	1939	Painting and mixed media
A Woman for Gods	1938	Watercolour and mixed media
Ab Ovo	1917	Watercolour and mixed media
Above Mountain Summit	1917	Drawing and mixed media
Abstract Trio	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Acrobats	1915	Watercolour and mixed media
Actor's Mask	1924	Painting and mixed media
Ad Marginem	1930	Drawing and mixed media
Ad Parnassum	1932	Painting and mixed media
Adventurer Ship	1927	Drawing and mixed media
Affected Place	1922	Drawing and mixed media
After a Sketch from Zurich	1914	Watercolour and mixed media
After Drawing	1919	Print
After The Floods	1936	Watercolour and mixed media
All Souls' Picture	1921	Print
Ancient Harmony	1925	Painting and mixed media
Angel Applicant	1939	Drawing and mixed media
Angel Serves the Desired	1920	Print
Angel, Still Female	1939	Painting and mixed media
Angelus Novus	1920	Drawing and mixed media
Animal Terror	1926	Painting and mixed media
Arab Song	1932	Painting and mixed media
Archangel	1938	Painting and mixed media
Architecture	1923	Painting and mixed media
Architecture of the Plain	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Around the Fish	1926	Painting and mixed media
Arrival of the Air Steamer	1921	Drawing and mixed media
Asiatic God	1924	Painting and mixed media
Astrological Fantasy Portrait	1924	Drawing and mixed media
Athlete's Head	1932	Watercolour and mixed media
Aufgehender Stern	1931	Painting and mixed media
Autumn Flower	1922	Painting and mixed media
Bad Band	1920	Drawing and mixed media
Baroque Centaur	1939	Painting and mixed media
Before the Blitz	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Before the Snow	1929	Drawing and mixed media
Besessenes Madchen	1924	Watercolour and mixed media
Bird Garden	1924	Print
Bird Wandering Off	1926	Watercolour and mixed media
Blossoms in the Night	1930	Watercolour and mixed media
Blue-Bird-Pumpkin	1939	Painting and mixed media
Boats in the Flood	1937	Painting and mixed media
Botanical Theatre	1934	Drawing and mixed media
Boy in Fancy Dress	1931	Watercolour and mixed media
Broken Key	1938	Print
Brother and Sister	1930	Watercolour and mixed media
But the Red Roof	1935	Painting and mixed media
C - C = Fisch	1931	Watercolour and mixed media
Cacti	1912	Painting and mixed media
Camel (in Rhythmic Landscape with Trees)	1920	Drawing and mixed media
Captive Pierrot	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Castle and Sun	1928	Drawing and mixed media
Cat and Bird	1928	Drawing and mixed media
Cathedrals	1925	Watercolour and mixed media
Chalice of the Heart	1937	Painting and mixed media
Characters in Yellow	1937	Painting and mixed media
Chosen Site	1927	Mixed media
Christmas Picture	1923	Drawing and mixed media
City of Towers	1916	Painting and mixed media
Clarification	1932	Painting and mixed media
Collection of Figurines	1926	Painting and mixed media
Colorful Architecture	1917	Painting and mixed media
Comedians' Handbill	1938	Print
Comic Opera Singer	1927	Painting and mixed media
Composition	1939	Painting and mixed media
Composition with Figures	1915	Drawing and mixed media
Composition with the Yellow Half-Moon and the Y	1918	Watercolour and mixed media
Conch–Still Life II	1939	Watercolour and mixed media
Cosmic Composition	1919	Painting and mixed media
Crystal Gradation	1921	Drawing and mixed media
Dance of the Grieving Child	1922	Painting and mixed media
Dancing Girl	1940	Painting and mixed media
Das Licht und Etliches	1931	Mixed media
Death and Fire	1940	Painting and mixed media
Death for the Idea	1915	Print
Demon as Pirate	1926	Watercolour and mixed media
Diana	1931	Painting and mixed media
Diavolo Player	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Die Kapelle	1917	Watercolour and mixed media
Die Vase	1938	Painting and mixed media
Doctor	1930	Drawing and mixed media
Dredger and Sailboat	1931	Watercolour and mixed media
Ein Tor	1939	Painting and mixed media
Ein Weib fur Gotter	1938	Mixed media
Embrace	1939	Watercolour and mixed media
Episode before an Arab Town	1923	Print
Equals Infinity	1932	Painting and mixed media
Eros	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Error on Green	1930	Watercolour and mixed media
Evening Figure	1935	Drawing and mixed media
Falling Bird	1919	Print
Fermata	1932	Watercolour and mixed media
Fire Clown	1921	Watercolour and mixed media
Fire Full Moon	1933	Watercolour and mixed media
Fire in the Evening	1929	Painting and mixed media
Fish in the Harbour	1916	Watercolour and mixed media
Fish Magic	1925	Watercolour and mixed media
Flock of Birds	1917	Drawing and mixed media
Flora on Sand	1927	Watercolour and mixed media
Flower Myth	1918	Print
Flower Stand with Watering Can and Bucket	1910	Watercolour and mixed media
Flowering Tree (Abstraction with Reference to a Flowering Tree)	1925	Painting and mixed media
Flowers in Pots	1923	Print
Flowers in Stone	1939	Painting and mixed media
Forest Witch	1938	Painting and mixed media
Fright of a Girl	1922	Drawing and mixed media
Fruits on Red	1930	Drawing and mixed media
Full Moon	1919	Mixed media
Föhn Wind in Franz Marc's Garden	1915	Watercolour and mixed media
Garden in St Germain, The European Quarter near Tunis	1914	Watercolour and mixed media
Ghost Chamber with the Tall Door (New Version)	1925	Print
Ghost of a Genius	1922	Drawing and mixed media
Girl in Mourning	1939	Painting and mixed media
Glance of a Landscape	1926	Watercolour and mixed media
Gluht Nach	1939	Drawing and mixed media
Golden Fish	1925	Watercolour and mixed media
Goldfish Wife	1921	Watercolour and mixed media
Green Plant, Blood, Louse	1924	Drawing and mixed media
Hafenbild	1918	Mixed media
Hammamet with Mosque	1914	Watercolour and mixed media
Harbour with Sailing Ships	1937	Painting and mixed media
Hauptweg und Nebenwege	1929	Painting and mixed media
Heavenly and Earthly Time	1927	Drawing and mixed media
Heroic Fiddling	1938	Painting and mixed media
Heroic Roses	1938	Painting and mixed media
Heroic Strokes of the Bow	—	Mixed media
Highway and Byways	1929	Drawing and mixed media
Houses near the Gravel Pit	1913	Watercolour and mixed media
Howling Dog	1928	Painting and mixed media
In the Current Six Thresholds	1929	Painting and mixed media
In the Style of Kairouan	1914	Drawing and mixed media
Individualized Altimetry of Stripes	1930	Painting and mixed media
Insula Dulcamara	1938	Print
Interior with the Clock	1913	Watercolour and mixed media
Irma Rossa the Animal Tamer	1918	Drawing and mixed media
Journey in Corsica	1927	Drawing and mixed media
Landscape with Bluebirds	1919	Watercolour and mixed media
Legend of the Nile	1937	Painting and mixed media
Lemon Harvest	1937	Watercolour and mixed media
Likeness in the Bower	1930	Watercolour and mixed media
Limits of Reason	1927	Painting and mixed media
Little Hope	1938	Watercolour and mixed media
Magdalena before the Conversion	1938	Drawing and mixed media
Mask of Fear	1932	Painting and mixed media
May Picture	1925	Painting and mixed media
Monument in a Cemetery	1922	Watercolour and mixed media
Monuments at G	1929	Watercolour and mixed media
Municipal Jewel	1917	Watercolour and mixed media
Mural from the Temple of Longing Thither	1922	Print
Nach der Uberschwemmung	1936	Watercolour and mixed media
New Harmony	1936	Painting and mixed media
New House in the Suburbs	—	Mixed media
Old Steamboat	1922	Drawing and mixed media
On the Edge	1930	Drawing and mixed media
Once Emerged from the Gray of Night	1918	Drawing and mixed media
One Who Understands	1934	Painting and mixed media
Oriental Pleasure Garden	1925	Painting and mixed media
Park of Idols	1939	Watercolour and mixed media
Passing by Red Pillars	1928	Watercolour and mixed media
Persian Nightingales	1917	Drawing and mixed media
Popular Wall Painting	1922	Painting and mixed media
Prestidigitator	1927	Watercolour and mixed media
Rainy Day	1931	Watercolour and mixed media
Red and White Domes	1914	Watercolour and mixed media
Red Balloon	1922	Drawing and mixed media
Redgreen and Violet-Yellow Rhythms	1920	Drawing and mixed media
Refuge	1930	Watercolour and mixed media
Rhythmic Rythmical	1930	Painting and mixed media
Saint of the Inner Light	1921	Print
Scaffolding of a New Building	1930	Painting and mixed media
Scholar in Dealing with Stars	1926	Watercolour and mixed media
Seated Woman	1930	Drawing and mixed media
Senecio	1922	Painting and mixed media
Separation in the Evening	1922	Drawing and mixed media
Sinbad the Sailor	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Skeptically Smiling	—	Mixed media
Small House in the Garden City	1928	Watercolour and mixed media
Small Portrait of a Girl in Yellow	1925	Painting and mixed media
Southern Gardens	1919	Watercolour and mixed media
Static-Dynamic Gradation	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Still Life	1927	Painting and mixed media
Still Life with Gladioli	1932	Watercolour and mixed media
Strange Garden	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Stricken City	1936	Painting and mixed media
Strong Dream	1929	Watercolour and mixed media
Struck from the List	1933	Drawing and mixed media
Structural I	1924	Drawing and mixed media
Sumpflegende	1919	Painting and mixed media
Temple Gardens	1920	Drawing and mixed media
The Arrow before the Target	1921	Drawing and mixed media
The Barbed Noose with the Mice	1923	Watercolour and mixed media
The Flora of the Heath	1925	Watercolour and mixed media
The Goldfish	1925	Watercolour and mixed media
The Hour Before One Night	1940	Painting and mixed media
The Man in Love	1923	Print
The Mask with the Flag	1925	Mixed media
The Pathos of Fertility	1921	Print
The Rhine at Duisburg	1937	Painting and mixed media
The Way to the Citadel	1937	Painting and mixed media
Three Houses and a Bridge	1922	Watercolour and mixed media
Tightrope Walker	1923	Print
Tomb in Three Parts	1923	Watercolour and mixed media
Tomcat's Turf	1919	Watercolour and mixed media
Tower in Orange and Green	1922	Drawing and mixed media
Tree and Architecture - Rhythms I	1920	Watercolour and mixed media
Tree and Architecture - Rhythms II	1920	Painting and mixed media
Tropical Dawn with the Owl	1921	Mixed media
Tropische Dammerung	1921	Painting and mixed media
Twittering Machine	1922	Drawing and mixed media
Variations (Progressive Motif)	1927	Watercolour and mixed media
Ventriloquist and Crier in the Moor	1923	Print
Viaducts Break Ranks	1937	Drawing and mixed media
Villa R	1919	Painting and mixed media
Village Carnival	1926	Painting and mixed media
Vor dem Blitz	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Wald-Hexen	1938	Painting and mixed media
Young Forest	1925	Drawing and mixed media

Related artworks

Explore eight other Klee works, beginning with works close in date to this one.

The Way to the Citadel

1937

Viaducts Break Ranks

1937

Death and Fire

1940

New Harmony

1936

Fire Full Moon

1933

Struck from the List

1933

Ad Parnassum

1932

Mask of Fear

1932

References

1. Zentrum Paul Klee, Paul Klee Foundation collection page, German object caption to Insula dulcamara, 1938,481 (C 1), oil and coloured paste paint on newsprint on jute over stretcher, original frame strips, 88 × 176 cm, Bern; its English Foundation history documents the 2005 institutional transition.
2. Museum of Modern Art, European Master Paintings from Swiss Collections: Post-Impressionism to World War II, printed p. 150 (PDF p. 153), with source notes to p. 150 on PDF pp. 172–73. Museum-hosted catalogue read directly: seven-work 1938 group, line/scale reading, suggested Calypso title, Dr Dulcamara analogy and sources. Its older medium wording is superseded by the current owner record, View source.
3. Existing page reproduction, visually inspected in its unchanged local splash; a small overview suited to broad composition, not technical or letter-by-letter verification.
4. Museum of Modern Art, Paintings, Drawings, and Prints by Paul Klee historical catalogue, no. 84, earlier lender name and abbreviated historical medium, View source.
5. Switzerland Tourism, Insula dulcamara collection summary, title/botanical association and largest-work claim; this tourism text is not a conservation or medical source, View source.
6. Bénédicte Ramade, “Paul Klee Insula Dulcamara, 1938”, L’Œil, 2016, French exhibition reception. Claims about Klee’s medicinal use of nightshade and specific illness effects are not supported there by a primary treatment record and are not adopted as facts here, View source.
7. Chris Pike, “Signing off: Paul Klee’s Insula dulcamara ”, Word & Image 30:2 (2014), pp. 117–130, author-uploaded full text and notes read. The hidden-name/signature, Arabic-letter and mortality proposals are his interpretations. His note 52 cites Grohmann’s English translation p. 146 for the Calypso account; the original German page remains to check, View source.
8. Oğuz Haşlakoğlu, “‘Bittersweet Island’ as Encoded Epithet: Klee in the Making”, Kaygı 21:1 (2022), pp. 68–77, English with Turkish abstract, read in full. It critiques Pike and proposes title rather than name in the signs. Its decoding and broad philosophical claims remain attributed interpretations, View source.
9. Zentrum Paul Klee-linked exhibition catalogue, Paul Klee: Equilíbrio Instável (2019), Portuguese/English, illustration 34 and discussion of ambiguous late signs and mortality as reception, View source.
10. Zentrum Paul Klee, Kosmos Klee easy-language exhibition sheet, German: qualified map/sea/figure/death questions rather than a fixed decoding; and Swiss inclusive-museum practice handbook, open-ended looking exercise using the painting.
11. Zentrum Paul Klee, image requests; 2025 press-image sheet. These show an image request route and limited press asset, not item-level commercial clearance for new website details.