Laternenfest

Laternenfest (Lantern Festival) was painted by Paul Klee in 1922, during his second year on the Bauhaus faculty in Weimar. He had joined the school in 1921 alongside Kandinsky, and the two of them were teaching the introductory color and form course that defined the Bauhaus pedagogy.

The painting is small — only 37 by 50 centimeters — and dense. Figures move through a dark field carrying paper lanterns. The lanterns repeat across the canvas like notes in a held chord. Geometric shapes float in and out of the figures. The whole thing feels closer to a piece of music being played than to a scene being depicted.

Klee believed painting should be as balanced and rhythmic as a piece of music, and the lanterns in this work are the visual equivalent of held chords — quiet, repeating, slightly off-center. He would go on to teach this approach for nearly a decade.

The painting is in a private collection. The version on your wall is the closest most viewers will ever come to it.