“The colour takes hold of me. I don’t have to chase it. It will take hold of me anyway (…) The colour and I are one. I am a painter”, writes Paul Klee shortly after his arrival in Tunisia. Intimate, insecure, but undoubtedly, amazed.
It was 1914, Paul Klee was not travelling alone, he was accompanied by the painters August Macke and Louis Moilliet. A journey that only lasted 14 days. Fourteen days that changed Paul. Fourteen days that changed modern art.
The painter, a German of Swiss origin, before his trip to Tunisia, neglected colour in his works, considering it a decorative element, not a means of achieving his goals, not a form of expression. However, his reticence towards it vanished so quickly with a single blink of an eye. Like a hummingbird that appears and disappears before the eyes of the viewer, Paul Klee no longer put up any resistance to colour. He now immersed himself in it.
There was something special in the Tunisian skies, in the streets, in the buildings, in the people. That Mediterranean warmth inebriated him, he hardly thought, possessed him and began to paint. Like someone who needs air to breathe, Paul Klee needed his watercolours to express everything he felt.
It is colour, in all its forms, that keeps Paul Klee insatiable, ready to capture it, not allowing it to escape. Tunisia has worked its magic once again, changed an artist. The one who once wrote insecurely, almost shyly in his own diary, is now “a painter”.
But Paul Klee not only captures colour (or allows himself to be captured), he captures movement, luminosity, the life that surrounds him.
This is how a cubism with colours so special, so unique, was born, which would change not only the painter and his travelling companions. On his return, he would change the established colour harmonies, he would greatly influence his contemporaries, he would transform the new artistic movements of the time.
Tunisia had opened his eyes and the doors to a new path in his career, Paul Klee had understood that it was necessary to continue to travel, to experiment, to surround himself with other artists.
Perhaps Tunisia is not just colour, Tunisia is a magnetic place that changes those who have the joy of letting themselves be trapped by its magic. Those who desire change and patiently wait for it. Tunisia is energy in its purest state that only catches or lets itself be caught by the viewer who longs for it. Who wants to drink from it as Paul Klee once did.
A text by Inés Tell, for Herdes Magazine
THE TUNISIAN WONDERS: A journey to the heart of Tunisia
The Tunisian Wonders, a fashion editorial of The Tunisian Issue Vol. VIII of by Herdes Magazine that features Yolancris pieces from the FW20 collection.
Photography: Yoye
Herdes Magazine
Stylist: Carlos Marán
Style Assist: Clàudia Roca
Makeup Artist & hair: Gloria Rico
Retouching: Harrison Medeiros
Model: Bianka Szilágyi