I recently visited Christie’s auction house in London to see an exhibition of twentieth-century art. I went hoping to encounter some of the artists whose work I have admired for years, and I left with photographs, new impressions and plenty to reflect on.
Among the works on display were paintings by Paul Klee, August Macke and Emil Nolde, three artists whose approaches to colour, form and expression offer different ways of looking at the world. Seeing their work together reminded me of the remarkable diversity of early modernism, but it also prompted me to think about the relationship between art, personal experience and the histories that surround the people who create it.
Some paintings draw us in through their colour. Others hold our attention through their strangeness, their delicacy or the emotions they seem to contain. And occasionally, learning more about an artist makes the experience of looking considerably more complicated.
Paul Klee: The Intimacy of an Imagined World
Paul Klee (1879–1940) is one of my favourite artists, so seeing his work up close was a particular pleasure. I have always been drawn to his distinctive visual language: his delicate lines, playful use of colour and dreamlike worlds created somewhere between abstraction and figuration.
There is something intimate and imaginative about his paintings. Klee had a remarkable ability to make the familiar feel mysterious. A landscape could become a dream, a city could resemble an imaginary civilisation, and a few seemingly simple lines could suggest an entire world.
His paintings often feel like fragments of thoughts or memories rather than straightforward depictions of reality. They invite us to participate in the act of looking, to discover relationships between shapes and colours and to imagine what might exist beyond the visible image.
What I particularly enjoy about Klee is that his work can appear joyful without being superficial. Beneath its apparent simplicity lies a sophisticated understanding of composition and colour. His paintings do not always offer a single interpretation, and I find that openness part of their appeal.
In 1914, Klee travelled to Tunisia with August Macke and Louis Moilliet. The journey became an important moment in his artistic development, deepening his engagement with colour and light. The experience of North African architecture, landscapes and intense Mediterranean illumination helped him explore new possibilities in painting.
Klee’s response to colour was different from Macke’s. While Macke often transformed everyday scenes into luminous, harmonious compositions, Klee developed a more symbolic and imaginative visual language. Their friendship and shared journey offer a glimpse into the exchanges of ideas that helped shape early twentieth-century art.
I left the exhibition feeling grateful to have seen Klee’s paintings in person. The intimacy of their scale, the delicacy of their lines and the subtle qualities of their materials become much more apparent when standing before the originals.
For me, Klee is one of those artists whose work rewards a slower kind of looking. I do not want to make this sound more profound than it is, but the longer I spend with his paintings, the more I discover about my own experience and the way I see the world around me. His work reminds me that looking is not always about identifying what a painting represents. Sometimes it is about allowing an image to open up possibilities that were not immediately visible.
Paul Klee: paintings I encountered at Christie’s:
Pic. 1. Kleine Erinnerung an Nymphenburg (A Little Memory of Nymphenburg), 1921, Gouache and watercolour on paper laid down on the artist’s mount.
Pic. 2. Kleine Mondlandschaft (Little Moon Landscape), 1920. Oil, pen and ink on board.
Pic. 3. Die Citadelle (The Citadel), 1929. Gouache and watercolour on gesso-primed burlap laid down on the artist’s mount.
Pic. 4. Vor der Blüte (Before the Blossom), 1924. Gouache and watercolour on white chalk-primed paper.
Pic. 5. Drei Felsen Stadt (Three-Rock City), 1926. Pen and ink on paper.
August Macke: The Poetry of Everyday Life
Another painting that caught my attention at Christie’s was August Macke’s Kolonnade mit Segelboot II (Colonnade with Sailboat II), painted in 1913–1914.
Pic 6. Kolonnade mit Segelboot II (Colonnade with Sailboat II) 1913-14
I had encountered reproductions of this painting in books on Expressionism, so seeing the original was particularly moving. There is a difference between looking at an image on a page and standing before the painting itself. The relationships between colours, the scale of the composition and the subtle details become much easier to appreciate.
Pic 7. Kolonnade mit Segelboot II (Colonnade with Sailboat II) 1913-14
What makes this painting so special to me is the way Macke transforms an ordinary landscape into something almost dreamlike. Through simplified forms, carefully balanced colours and an understated composition, he moves beyond the straightforward representation of a place. Architecture and landscape become interlocking elements, each shape contributing to the harmony of the whole.
Macke was influenced by his encounter with the French painter Robert Delaunay in Paris in 1912. Delaunay explored the expressive possibilities of contrasting colours and fragmented forms, using their relationships to create movement and visual energy rather than relying entirely on conventional perspective. Macke absorbed these ideas but developed a distinctive approach of his own.
The Delaunays also offer an interesting connection to Sonia Delaunay, whose work I was also able to see at Christie’s.
Pic 8. Rythme couleur, Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979)
Robert and Sonia both explored the expressive possibilities of colour, although their practices developed in different directions across painting, abstraction and design. Seeing Sonia’s work alongside Macke’s and Klee’s at Christie’s made the exchanges between artists in early twentieth-century Europe more tangible.
One of Macke’s most distinctive contributions to Expressionism was his ability to find emotional intensity in the beauty of everyday life.
Expressionism is sometimes associated with anxiety, distortion and psychological anguish. Macke offers a different perspective. His paintings are often luminous and serene, filled with the colours of gardens, parks, shop windows, architecture and people going about their daily lives. His vision is joyful without being superficial.
He was attentive to the small things that might otherwise go unnoticed: sunlight reflected on water, the geometry of buildings, the relationships between neighbouring colours and the quiet atmosphere of an ordinary scene. His paintings suggest that modern art need not abandon the visible world to transform it. Instead, colour and composition can reveal something that ordinary vision might miss.
Macke was one of the leading figures associated with German Expressionism and a member of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), the artistic circle that emerged in Munich around Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc in 1911. I also encountered work by Kandinsky at Christie’s.
Pic 9. Das Bunte Leben, 1907, Waaily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944)
Expressionism challenged the idea that painting should simply reproduce what the eye sees. Its artists sought to convey an inner experience of reality, using colour, form and composition to express something beyond the subject itself. Macke’s particular contribution was to discover this expressive potential in scenes of everyday life.
As previously mentioned in the section about Paul Klee, in 1914, Macke travelled to Tunisia with his friends Paul Klee and Louis Moilliet. The intense light, vivid colours and distinctive architecture offered new ways of seeing and depicting the landscape. The journey was significant for both Macke and Klee, although each developed a different artistic response to the experience.
For anyone interested in this period, I recommend Kandinsky and Klee in Tunisia by Roger Benjamin and Cristina Ashjian. The book explores the relationship between modernist painting and European artists’ encounters with North Africa, examining the influence of Tunisian architecture and visual culture as well as the earlier travels of Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter.
It provides a valuable context for understanding how travel can transform an artist’s way of seeing, while also inviting reflection on the cultural encounters that helped shape European modernism.
Tragically, Macke’s career was cut short by the First World War. He was killed on the Western Front on 26 September 1914, aged just twenty-seven. His death came at a moment when his understanding of colour and composition was developing in remarkable ways.
Kolonnade mit Segelboot II belongs to this final period, when his forms were becoming increasingly distilled and his compositions more abstract. It is difficult not to wonder how his art might have developed had he lived.
What I find most compelling about Macke is that his work challenges the assumption that modern art must be dark or anguished to be profound. His paintings demonstrate that experimentation and emotional depth can also arise from serenity, radiance and close attention to the world around us.
Perhaps the most honest way to look at his work is to acknowledge this contradiction rather than try to make it disappear.
Standing before his painting at Christie’s, I was reminded of how much can be achieved through apparently simple means. A few forms, carefully arranged colours and a particular quality of light can transform a familiar landscape into something memorable.
Emil Nolde: When Art and Its History Become Difficult to Separate
The paintings of Emil Nolde (1867–1956) brought me back to a different kind of reflection.
I saw several of his works at Christie’s, which reminded me of the paintings I encountered at the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen in December 2025.
Looking at them again, I found myself thinking not only about their artistic qualities but also about my own response to them.
Nolde’s expressive use of colour, bold brushwork and emotionally charged imagery have always attracted me. There is an intensity to his paintings that can be difficult to ignore. His landscapes, flowers, figures and religious scenes often seem to exist somewhere between the visible world and an inner emotional landscape.
What interests me most is that I experienced a strong emotional response to his work before I knew much about his political and personal background. I was drawn to the paintings instinctively, without considering the beliefs of the person who had created them.
Learning about Nolde’s history made that response more complicated.
Pic 10-11. Kosakenadel (1915), Emil Nolde (1867–1956). Oil on canvas. Signed “Emil Nolde” (centre left).
Nolde was an important figure associated with German Expressionism, but he also supported National Socialism. He hoped that the Na*i regime would recognise him as an artist whose work belonged within its vision of German culture. Instead, in 1937, more than a thousand of his works were confiscated from German museums, and some were displayed in the notorious Degenerate Art exhibition. In 1941, he was expelled from the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts and prohibited from practising his profession, yet he remained a supporter of the German regime.
Pic 12. Alte Händlerin (1930), Emil Nolde (1867–1956). Watercolour, brush and ink on paper. Signed “Nolde” (lower left).
This is an uncomfortable contradiction. Nolde was rejected by a regime whose ideology he supported. His experience reminds us that being persecuted for one’s art does not necessarily mean opposing the political system responsible for that persecution.
Pic 13. Tänzerin in langem Kleid (1920), Emil Nolde (1867–1956). Watercolour on paper.
For a long time, the story of his conflict with the Na*i authorities could encourage an image of Nolde as a persecuted artist, obscuring the more troubling aspects of his political convictions. The full history is more complicated, and it is important not to confuse artistic persecution with moral opposition to the regime.
Pic 14. Bergsee (1930), Emil Nolde (1867–1956). Watercolour, brush and Indian ink on paper. Signed “Nolde” (lower right).
Knowing this makes it difficult to look at his paintings in quite the same way.
I do not think my initial response to his work was false because it came before my knowledge of his past. I responded to the paintings as I encountered them. Their colours, forms and atmosphere affected me before I had the information that would later complicate my understanding. Yet I can no longer ignore that the context is irrelevant.
Can we separate the art from the artist? It is a question without an easy answer. A painting is more than a record of its creator’s beliefs. It is also an arrangement of colour, light, form and gesture, and it acquires new meanings through the people who encounter it. We may find something in a work that its creator could never have anticipated, or feel moved by an image without sharing the worldview from which it emerged.
At the same time, artists do not create outside history. Their work is shaped by the societies they inhabit, the ideas they absorb and the people whose lives they choose to represent or disregard. Knowledge of an artist’s actions and beliefs can change not only our judgement of the person but also the questions we bring to the work.
I find myself caught between these two positions. I can still appreciate Nolde’s expressive power, but that appreciation now exists alongside discomfort. I do not want to dismiss the paintings, yet I am equally reluctant to allow their beauty to become an excuse for overlooking his support for one of the most abhorrent regimes of the 20th century.
Perhaps the distinction is between appreciation and absolution. To recognise the power of a painting is not to absolve its maker of responsibility. Equally, acknowledging an artist’s moral failures does not necessarily require us to deny the artistic qualities of everything they produced.
I still find Nolde’s paintings compelling. I also find his political and personal views deeply troubling.
Noose’s personal history often reminds me of Celine and how he and his books are approached today. It also brought to my mind the book French Lessons by Alice Kaplan where one of the topics discussed is the reasons related to French intellectuals being attracted by fascism during the 1930s and 1940s. The large part of French Lessons evolves around the question why some French intellectuals and writers have been attracted to fascism, among them Louis Ferdinand Celine, Robert Brasillach, Maurice Bardeche just to name a few. It is important to mention that Alice Kaplan’s father was one of the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazis. For Kaplan being a Jewish academic, it was very conflicting to feel this fascination with Celine’s writing. There is a mention of an American Jewish academic called Milton Hindus who did a research work on Celine following the WWII. He conducted lengthy correspondence with Celine, and he went to visit him in Denmark. After the WWII, Hindus was one of the signatories of the petition stating that Celine was guilty merely of unpopular opinions and not of political collaborations. These sentiments can be quite uneasy for some people but it is definitely worth discussing these emotions. Years later, another Jewish American writer, Philip Roth, once referred to Celine as his Proust. There are those questions of ethics, judgement, guilt that are posed but the answers are not there. Kaplan asks herself at some point what it means for a Jewish intellectual to conduct work on the ones who were considered anti-Semites. There is also a question about the art and its artist. Can we separate both? This is also the question I was left with after seeing Nolde’s artwork.
Paintings photographed at the National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, December 2025:
Pic 15. Clematis and Dahlia (1940), Emil Nolde (1867–1956). Oil on canvas.
Pic 16. Young Women (Unge kvinder) (1947), Emil Nolde (1867–1956). Oil on canvas.
Pic 17. Legend (1932–1939), Emil Nolde (1867–1956). Oil on canvas.
Pic 18. Robbers at Bombüll (1917), Emil Nolde (1867–1956). Oil on canvas.
Pic 19. The Last Supper (1909), Emil Nolde (1867–1956). Oil on canvas.
Pic 20. North Sea Dunes (Vesterhavsklitter) (1936), Emil Nolde (1867–1956). Oil on canvas.
Three Artists, Different Ways of Seeing
Looking at the paintings by Klee, Macke and Nolde together reminded me that there was never just one way to approach modern art.
Klee invites us into imaginative worlds where a line can become a landscape and a few shapes can suggest an entire civilisation. Macke finds beauty and emotional depth in the ordinary scenes of everyday life, transforming them through luminous colour and harmonious composition. Nolde draws us into a more intense, sometimes unsettling world of expressive colour and emotion, where our response to the work may become inseparable from questions about the person who created it.
Their artistic approaches were different, but all three challenged the idea that painting should simply reproduce the visible world. Colour could become an independent language. Forms could be simplified, distorted or rearranged. A painting could express an experience rather than merely describe a subject.
Their stories also remind us how profoundly the history of the early twentieth century shaped the lives of artists. Macke’s death in 1914 brought a promising career to an abrupt end. Klee continued to develop his imaginative visual language through decades of extraordinary artistic change. Nolde’s legacy remains inseparable from the contradictions between his expressive art and his political beliefs.
I find it fascinating that a single visit to an exhibition can lead to such different reflections. Some paintings remind me of the pleasure of looking slowly and allowing the imagination to wander. Others prompt questions that have no comfortable answers.
I do not want to approach art only as a historical subject to be explained, nor do I want to rely entirely on my first emotional response. I want to leave room for both: the instinctive pleasure of looking and the more demanding work of understanding what lies behind the image.
Sometimes, learning more about a painting deepens our appreciation. Sometimes it introduces a tension that cannot easily be resolved. And sometimes it reminds us that looking again means being willing to change our minds.
There is something else to look forward to in London. In 2027, the National Gallery will present German Expressionism: Modern Painting 1900–1918, bringing together more than fifty works associated with the movement’s two pivotal groups, Die Brücke (The Bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). The exhibition is scheduled to run from 18 March to 1 August 2027.
I am particularly looking forward to seeing how the exhibition tells the story of this extraordinary generation of artists, whose experiments with colour, form and individual expression transformed modern painting. The outbreak of the First World War profoundly disrupted their lives and artistic communities, and Macke’s story is a particularly poignant reminder of what was lost.
I hope the exhibition will offer an opportunity to look more closely at the different ways these artists approached the world, and to consider the historical circumstances in which their work emerged.
My visit to Christie’s reminded me why I keep returning to galleries. Sometimes I discover an artist I want to learn more about; sometimes I encounter a familiar painting that reveals something new when seen in person. And sometimes a work of art leaves me with questions that continue long after I have left the room.
I came away thinking about colour, imagination, friendship and the fragility of artistic lives. I also came away thinking about the responsibilities that accompany admiration, and the importance of looking at art with curiosity rather than unquestioning reverence.
For me, that is part of the pleasure of looking closely. Art does not always provide answers, and it does not always make us comfortable. Sometimes it simply gives us a reason to look again.
