Paul Klee’s Fish Magic looks like a scene out of some aquatic wonderland – mesmerizing multi-colored fish against a dark inky backdrop.

In a body of work that includes over nine thousand pieces, Fish Magic is Klee’s largest painting. But it isn’t the only thing that makes Fish Magic stand out from the rest. In fact, each of his paintings have a unique style and approach, from the minimalist lines of Why Does He Run? to the colorful blocks of Static-Dynamic Gradation. He dashed from style to style as seamlessly as a fish swims through water, going between, and combining, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, and more. 

Beginning in 1921, Klee acted as a faculty member of the Bauhaus school for ten years, where he taught students about the importance of analyzing fish tanks. Yes, really. In his home, Klee had a large aquarium filled with multi-colored fish, and it was the task of his students to observe their movements. Klee believed compositions were all about movement, and he also lectured his students about the importance of studying nature for artmaking. His fish fascination was strong for a decade or so. In the 1920s, he created several fish-focused paintings, including Aquarium (1927), and Around the Fish (1926). 

While some of us may have a plastic castle and treasure chest in our fish tanks, Klee throws in symbols of clocks, clowns, flowers, and the moon. For Klee, the clock (the only object caught in a fishnet) stands as a symbol for controlling time, so that he would have more of it to dedicate to painting. Beside it sits a shining moon, showcasing Klee's frequent desire to evoke cosmic elements in his paintings. Klee also glued a small patch of muslin in the center of Fish Magic, making it a collage of mixed materials. 

Louise and Walter Arensberg donated Fish Magic to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Before this, the painting hung in a guest bedroom in their Hollywood house, alongside Klee's Guest of a Landscape (1926), and Small Houses in the Garden City. When negotiating the relocation of their collection to the Philadelphia Museum, the Arensbergs were concerned about the proposed space for these works, writing: "We would like...a better setting for the Klees than the cribbed, cabined, and confined space to which you have allocated them," adding somewhat boastfully, " - in a room, by the way, which is scarcely more than one-half the size of our own bedroom."

Only a few years ago, as a push to bring art to young students, Fish Magic was reproduced and placed across several neighborhoods in Philly thanks to the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Inside Out program. Once it went outside a Glenside Dunkin' Donuts, and then at a high school in Strawberry Mansion.