Before the Snow, 1929 by Paul Klee

One is surely reminded of late autumn when viewing this picture, clouds bringing snow above the tree, the earth turned brown-red and gray below it. The two clouds with their peripheral colors come close to touching tree and earth, planes overlapping without touching. By contrast, the colored planes of the tree intersect, but the compartments are filled with one color only, pink at the center, reseda green and light violet next, a darker violet and a violet-gray at the edges. The space is black-brown and black-green.

The fact that this work brings to mind ghosts and demons or the transitory nature of human existence is almost inevitable. "We only pass by, like a passing breath of air," Rilke says in a poem; consequently, inner cosmic space in the poet's sense, the inner and outer processes, correspond to each other, and the tree in our picture is not outside us: "O, I who would grow, I look outside, and it is within me that the tree is growing."

Will the tree survive? Its colors are reassuring, suggesting fall and spring at the same time: Indian summer. the snow will cover it and keep it warm until the buds and pointed tips of the leaves are allowed to unfold.