A large round head fills the canvas, divided into patches of pink, yellow, white and tan, like a mosaic of small panels. Two round red-brown eyes sit under lids drawn as long curves, one eye beneath a single green arched eyebrow, with a white triangle over the other. A small purple mark stands for the nose.

Below the head, a neck of pink, white and violet squares rises from a band of red and purple, all against an orange ground. Paul Klee signed and dated it at the lower left. The Kunstmuseum Basel says the picture was painted in Klee's Bauhaus years and is now counted among his best-known and best-loved works. Klee took the title from a plant: Senecio is the botanical name of common groundsel.

In his own catalog of his works he titled it "Baldgreis," roughly "soon-to-be old man," which the museum says may allude to the literal meaning of the German plant name. The museum also notes that the scholar Jim M. Jordan sees a resemblance to the disc-shaped heads of dolls from West African Asante culture, which Klee probably knew. The museum bought it in 1931 from the Munich dealers Günther and Sophie Franke, one of its first acquisitions of modern art.

It is in the Kunstmuseum Basel in Basel.