Paul Klee was born in Berne, Switzerland in 1879, but spent much of his life in Germany (Gale). Berne is famous for a clock tower, seen in several of Klee’s paintings (Verdi 151). Klee was influenced by the arts from a very young age. His father was a musician, his great-uncle a portrait artist, and his grandmother a painter (Arnold). Klee enjoyed learning from his father and grandmother, the two most accessible sources of the arts to him, but ultimately felt that he must decide between playing the violin and painting, finally choosing the latter.  “With his parents' reluctant permission, in 1898 he began studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Heinrich Knirr and Franz von Stuck” (Arnold). Klee spent summers in Possenhofen fishing, an object prevalent in many of his paintings (Verdi 151). After his time at the Academy, Klee was married to Lily Stumpf and begin teaching at the Bauhaus in 1914, allowing him to spend time on his own works, including Fish Magic (Gale).

After visiting Tunis in the mid-1920's, his art techniques went from black and white to a genre called divisionism.  This art technique was used from this year forward by creating "the opposition between an endlessly divisible continuum, which he called 'dividual', and individual form" (Kudielka 104).  This means that he used contrasting forms that showed repeating shapes that could be endlessly divided and forms that could not be divided.  When interpreting one of Klee's paintings, Fish Magic, you can look at each individual fish and compare the scales, fins and gills of each fish or look at the painting dividually or as a whole and see a group of fish that make up the artwork.  Besides interpreting the individual and dividual form, this genre also included the use of many lines and shades of colors.  Not only did he incorporate divisionism into his paintings but also abstract surrealism.  This genre of art is expressing the subconscious through images and by creating bizarre dream-like images.  After this turning point from black and white to abstract surrealism and divisionism, he created many paintings, including a watercolor painting in 1925 called Fish Magic.

Fish Magic depicts many seemingly unrelated images that are positioned very specifically to give the large piece meaning. An important quality to notice is that the piece is made up of a small, square piece of canvas in the center of a large, rectangular canvas (Verdi 147). This center square has a mirror effect on several of the fish, the flower vase, and on the head of the being with two different faces (Verdi 148).  When first looking at the painting it is evident that the general theme of the piece is an atmosphere where life in the form of fish and plants live freely among people and planets. The seemingly unrelated clown and curtain in the corners of the piece also draw the viewer’s attention (Verdi 148). The center figure appears to be a suspended church steeple with a clock in the center of it (Verdi 148). This is significant because it gives the idea that “at its heart beats a clock” (Verdi 148). The rest of the image, besides the clown and curtain, are clearly flowers, fish, and celestial objects.  

The various figures of the Fish Magic painting can be put together to have several different messages or interpretations depending on who is viewing it. The piece can be interpreted purely as an underwater scene where the clock represents “the time remaining before the fish are caught” (Verdi 151). However, a more likely theme of this work that is seen in a lot of Klee’s works is “the difference between cosmic and earthly time-between infinite and finite time…It suggests that all life is controlled by time” (Verdi 151). The life is represented by the flowers, fish, and beings and time is represented by the clock, celestial objects, and the curtain. The being with two faces appears to be looking into both worlds of time versus life which reminds the being of the eventual mortality of all life (Verdi 153).