View into the Fertile Country, 1932

About the Work

“I painted a landscape resembling the view from the wild mountains of the Valley of the Kings into the cultivated land,” Klee wrote in a letter to his wife in 1932, after he had finished the painting. It had been three years since he visited Egypt, but his journey had left lasting impressions. Ancient Egypt’s lifeline, the Nile River, flows in a wavy line in the foreground. Buildings are represented by geometric shapes, behind which rows of multicoloured horizontal stripes create an illusion of fields along the banks of the Nile. Egypt’s green and fertile land extends all the way to the horizon.