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Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism.
Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored color theory, writing about it extensively. His lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory ( Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre), published in English as the Paul Klee Notebooks, are held to be as important for modern art as Leonardo da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting was for the Renaissance.Disegno e progettazione By Marcello Petrignani p. 17Guilo Carlo Argan "Preface", Paul Klee, The Thinking Eye, (ed. Jürg Spiller), Lund Humphries, London, 1961, p. 13.
He and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture in Germany. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.
In 1880, his family moved to Bern, where they eventually, in 1897, after a number of changes of residence, moved into their own house in the .Baumgartner, p. 199 From 1886 to 1890, Klee visited primary school and received, at the age of 7, violin classes at the Municipal Music School. He was so talented on violin that, aged 11, he received an invitation to play as an extraordinary member of the Bern Music Association.Giedion-Welcker, pp. 10–11 His other hobbies, drawing and writing poems, were not fostered in the same way as music was.
In his early years, following his parents' wishes, Klee focused on becoming a musician; but he decided on the visual arts during his teen years, partly out of rebellion and partly because modern music lacked meaning for him. He stated, "I didn't find the idea of going in for music creatively particularly attractive in view of the decline in the history of musical achievement."Partsch, p. 9 As a musician, he played and felt emotionally bound to traditional works of the eighteenth and Romantic music centuries, but as an artist he craved the freedom to explore radical ideas and styles. At sixteen, Klee's landscape drawings already show considerable skill.Kagan p. 54
Around 1897, Klee started his diary, which he kept until 1918, and which has provided scholars with valuable insight into his life and thinking.Partsch, p. 7 During his school years, he avidly drew in his school books, in particular drawing caricatures, and already demonstrating skill with line and volume.Partsch, p. 10 He barely passed his final exams at the "Gymnasium" of Bern, where he qualified in the Humanities. With his characteristic dry wit, he wrote, "After all, it's rather difficult to achieve the exact minimum, and it involves risks."Kagan, p. 22 On his own time, in addition to his deep interests in music and art, Klee was a great reader of literature, and later a writer on art theory and aesthetics.Jardi, p. 8
With his parents' reluctant permission, in 1898 Klee began studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Heinrich Knirr and Franz von Stuck. He excelled at drawing but seemed to lack any natural color sense. He later recalled, "During the third winter I even realized that I probably would never learn to paint." During these times of youthful adventure, Klee spent much time in pubs and had affairs with lower-class women and artists' models. He had an illegitimate son in 1900 who died several weeks after birth.Partsch, p. 11
After receiving his Fine Arts degree, Klee traveled in Italy from October 1901 to May 1902Olga's Gallery Paul Klee with friend Hermann Haller. They visited Rome, Florence, Naples and the Amalfi Coast, studying the master painters of past centuries. He exclaimed, "The Roman Forum and the Holy See have spoken to me. Humanism wants to suffocate me."Jardi, p. 9 He responded to the colors of Italy, but sadly noted, "that a long struggle lies in store for me in this field of color."Kagan, p. 23 For Klee, color represented the optimism and nobility in art, and a hope for relief from the pessimistic nature he expressed in his black-and-white grotesques and satires. Returning to Bern, he lived with his parents for several years, and took occasional art classes. By 1905, he was developing some experimental techniques, including drawing with a needle on a blackened pane of glass, resulting in fifty-seven works including his Portrait of My Father (1906). In the years 1903–05 he also completed a cycle of eleven zinc-plate called Inventions, his first exhibited works, in which he illustrated several grotesque characters. “Invention” Paul Klee at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Francisco ARTinvestment.RU – 18 April 2009 He commented, "though I'm fairly satisfied with my etchings I can't go on like this. I'm not a specialist."Jardi, p. 10 Klee was still dividing his time with music, playing the violin in an orchestra and writing concert and theater reviews.Partsch, p. 12
The release of the almanac was delayed for the benefit of an exhibition. The first Blaue Reiter exhibition took place from 18 December 1911 to 1 January 1912 in the Moderne Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser in Munich. Klee did not attend it, but in the second exhibition, which occurred from 12 February to 18 March 1912 in the Hans Goltz, 17 of his graphic works were shown. The name of this art exhibition was Schwarz-Weiß, as it only regarded graphic painting.Dietmar Elger, Expressionismus. 1988, p. 141, Initially planned to be released in 1911, the release date of the Der Blau Reiter almanac by Kandinsky and Marc was delayed in May 1912, including the reproduced ink drawing Steinhauer by Klee. At the same time, Kandinsky published his art history writing Über das Geistige in der Kunst.Catalogue raisonné, volume 1, 1998, p. 512; Thomas Kain, Mona Meister, Franz-Joachim Verspohl; Paul Klee in Jena 1924. Der Vortrag. Minerva. Writings from Jena to Art History, volume 10, art history seminar, Jenoptik AG, print house Gera, Jena 1999, p. 92
After returning home, Klee painted his first pure abstract, In the Style of Kairouan (1914), composed of colored rectangles and a few circles.Partsch, p. 27 The colored rectangle became his basic building block, what some scholars associate with a musical note, which Klee combined with other colored blocks to create a color harmony analogous to a musical composition. His selection of a particular color palette emulates a musical key. Sometimes he uses complementary pairs of colors, and other times "dissonant" colors, again reflecting his connection with musicality.Kagan, pp. 27, 29.
The deaths of his friends August Macke and Franz Marc in battle began to affect him. Venting his distress, he created several pen and ink on war themes including Death for the Idea (1915).Reproduced alongside Gerg Traki's poem in Zeit-Echo 1915.A reverse ekphrasis.
Klee moved on 20 August to the aircraft maintenance company in Oberschleissheim, executing skilled manual work, such as restoring aircraft camouflage, and accompanying aircraft transports. On 17 January 1917, he was transferred to the Royal Bavarian flying school in Gersthofen (which 54 years later became the USASA Field Station Augsburg) to work as a clerk for the treasurer until the end of the war. This allowed him to stay in a small room outside of the barrack block and continue painting.Beate Ofczarek, Stefan Frey: Chronologie einer Freundschaft, pp. 214 et seqqPartsch, p. 35 He continued to paint during the entire war and managed to exhibit in several shows. By 1917, Klee's work was selling well and art critics acclaimed him as the best of the new German artists.Partsch, p. 36
His Ab ovo (1917) is particularly noteworthy for its sophisticated technique. It employs watercolor on gauze and paper with a chalk ground, which produces a rich texture of triangular, circular, and crescent patterns. Demonstrating his range of exploration, mixing color and line, his Warning of the Ships (1918) is a colored drawing filled with symbolic images on a field of suppressed color.Partsch, p. 40
Klee taught at the Bauhaus from January 1921 to April 1931.Geelhaar, Christian (1972). Paul Klee und das Bauhaus. DuMont Schauberg, Köln, p. 9 He was a "Form" master in the bookbinding, stained glass, and mural painting workshops and was provided with two studios.Jardi, p. 17 In 1922, Kandinsky joined the staff and resumed his friendship with Klee. Later that year the first Bauhaus exhibition and festival was held, for which Klee created several of the advertising materials.Jardi, p. 18 Klee welcomed the many conflicting theories and opinions within the Bauhaus: "I also approve of these forces competing one with the other if the result is achievement."Partsch, p. 48
Klee was also a member of Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four), with Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, and Alexej von Jawlensky, which formed in 1923, at the instigation of Galka Scheyer, who subsequently organized exhibitions of their work in the United States. In 1924, Klee had his first exhibits in Paris, and he became a hit with the French Surrealists.Jardi, pp. 18–19 Klee visited Egypt in 1928, which impressed him less than Tunisia. In 1929, the first major monograph on Klee's work was published, written by Will Grohmann.Jardi, p. 20
Klee also taught at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1931 to 1933, and was singled out by a Nazi newspaper, "Then that great fellow Klee comes onto the scene, already famed as a Bauhaus teacher in Dessau. He tells everyone he's a thoroughbred Arab, but he's a typical Galician Jew."Partsch, p. 73 His home was searched by the Gestapo and he was fired from his job. The private Klee: Works by Paul Klee from the Bürgi Collection Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 12 August – 20 October 2000Partsch, p. 55 His self-portrait Struck from the List (1933) commemorates the sad occasion. In 1933–34, Klee had shows in London and Paris, and finally met Pablo Picasso, whom he greatly admired.Jardi, p. 23 The Klee family emigrated to Switzerland in late 1933.
Klee was at the peak of his creative output. His Ad Parnassum (1932) is considered his masterpiece and the best example of his Pointillism; it is also one of his largest, most finely worked paintings.Partsch, p. 64Kagan, p. 42 He produced nearly 500 works in 1933 during his last year in Germany.Partsch, p. 74 However, in 1933, Klee began experiencing the symptoms of what was diagnosed as scleroderma after his death. The progression of his fatal disease, which made swallowing very difficult, can be followed through the art he created in his last years. His output in 1936 was only 25 pictures. In the later 1930s, his health recovered somewhat and he was encouraged by a visit from Kandinsky and Picasso.Jardi, p. 25 Klee's simpler and larger designs enabled him to keep up his output in his final years, and in 1939 he created over 1,200 works, a career high for one year.Partsch, p. 76 He used heavier lines and mainly geometric forms with fewer but larger blocks of color. His varied color palettes, some with bright colors and others somber, perhaps reflected his alternating moods of optimism and pessimism.Partsch, pp. 77–80 Back in Germany in 1937, seventeen of Klee's pictures were included in an exhibition of "Degenerate art" and 102 of his works in public collections were seized by the Nazis.Partsch, p. 94
He endured pain that seems to be reflected in his last works of art. In his last months he created 50 drawings of angels. One of his last paintings, Death and Fire, features a skull in the center with the German word for death, "Tod", appearing in the face. He died in Muralto, Locarno, Switzerland, on 29 June 1940 without having obtained Swiss citizenship, despite his birth in that country. His art work was considered too revolutionary, even degenerate, by the Swiss authorities, but eventually they accepted his request six days after his death.Partsch, p. 80 His legacy comprised about 9,000 works of art. The words on his tombstone, Klee's credo, placed there by his son Felix, say, "I cannot be grasped in the here and now, for my dwelling place is as much among the dead as the yet unborn. Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual, but still not close enough."Partsch, p. 84 He was buried at Schosshaldenfriedhof, Bern, Switzerland.
He was a natural draftsman, and through long experimentation developed a mastery of color and tonality. Many of his works combine these skills. He uses a great variety of color palettes from nearly Monochrome to highly polychrome. His works often have a fragile childlike quality to them and are usually on a small scale. He often used geometric forms and grid format compositions as well as letters and numbers, frequently combined with playful figures of animals and people. Some works were completely abstract. Many of his works and their titles reflect his dry humor and varying moods; some express political convictions. They frequently allude to poetry, music and dreams and sometimes include words or musical notation. The later works are distinguished by spidery hieroglyph-like symbols. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote about Klee in 1921, "Even if you hadn't told me he plays the violin, I would have guessed that on many occasions his drawings were transcriptions of music."
Pamela Kort observed: "Klee's 1933 drawings present their beholder with an unparalleled opportunity to glimpse a central aspect of his aesthetics that has remained largely unappreciated: his lifelong concern with the possibilities of parody and wit. Herein lies their real significance, particularly for an audience unaware that Klee's art has political dimensions." Paul Klee 1933 at www.culturekiosque.com
Among the few plastic works are made between 1916 and 1925, for his son Felix. The artist neither counted them as a component of his oeuvre, nor did he list them in his catalogue raisonné. Thirty of the preserved puppets are stored at the Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern.Daniel Kupper: Paul Klee. p. 81
Klee's intuitional approach to his paintings and drawings is annotated in his poetry in such short sections of longer works as "Has inspiration/ eyes, or does she/ walk in her sleep?" Some Poems, p. 12 and "The practised hand/ often knows it better than the head". Three Painter Poets, p. 124 Aichele also observes that Klee "continued to incorporate selected poems into drawings and paintings" throughout his career. Paul Klee, Poet/Painter, p. 20 Among his instances is "Once emerged from the grey of night" ( Einst dem Grau der Nacht enttaucht, 1918) as an example of "pictorial writing" ( Bilderschrift). Here the title is taken from the first line of a poetic composition at the head of the picture, while a cut-up of individual letters in coloured squares succeeds it. Paul Klee net
Another example given by Aichele is "Tree nursery" (1929), with its banded lines of incised primitive script, Phillips Collection where "the meaning resides in the structural rhythms set in motion by the viewer, who attempts to reconcile these two fundamentally different approaches to interpretation".Aichele 2006, p. 160 Over the following decade Klee concentrated increasingly on depicting these poetic signs expressive of the narrative of which they are part. Paul Klee Works, 1938 According to Aichele, these are encompassed by the intellectual movements of the time that eventually resulted in Concrete Poetry and, as an extension of this, Visual Poetry. Paul Klee, Poet/Painter, p. 185 ff
Klee began to introduce a new technique in 1905: scratching on a blackened glass panel with a needle. In that manner he created about 57 Verre églomisé pictures, among those the 1905 Gartenszene (Scene on a Garden) and the 1906 Porträt des Vaters (Portrait of a Father), with which he tried to combine painting and scratching.Giedion-Welcker, Klee, pp. 22–25 Klee's solitary early work ended in 1911, the year he met and was inspired by the graphic artist Alfred Kubin, and became associated with the artists of the Blaue Reiter.Temkin, Ann . "Klee, Paul." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web.
Föhn im Marc'schen Garten (Foehn at Marc's Garden) was made after the Turin trip. It indicates the relations between color and the stimulus of Macke and Delaunay. Although elements of the garden are clearly visible, a further steering towards abstraction is noticeable. In his diary Klee wrote the following note at that time:
In the large molding pit are lying ruins, on which one partially hangs. They provide the material for the abstraction. … The terrible the world, the abstract the art, while a happy world produces secularistic art.Göttler: Der Blaue Reiter. pp. 118 et seq
Under the impression of his military service he created the painting Trauerblumen (Velvetbells) in 1917, which, with its graphical signs, vegetal and phantastic shapes, is a forerunner of his future works, harmonically combining graphic, color and object. For the first time birds appear in the pictures, such as in Blumenmythos (Flower Myth) from 1918, mirroring the flying and falling planes he saw in Gersthofen, and the photographed plane crashes.
In the 1918 watercolor painting already mentioned above, Einst dem Grau der Nacht enttaucht, he incorporated letters in small - in terms of color - separated squares, cutting off the first verse from the second one with silver paper. At the top of the cardboard, which carries the picture, the verses are inscribed in manuscript form. Here, Klee did not lean on Delaunay's colors, but on Marc's, although the picture content of both painters does not correspond with each other. Herwarth Walden, Klee's art dealer, saw in them a "Wachablösung" (changing of the guard) of his art.Partsch: Klee, p. 41 Since 1919 he often used oil colors, with which he combined watercolors and colored pencil. The Villa R (Kunstmuseum Basel) from 1919 unites visible realities such as sun, moon, mountains, trees and architectures, as well as surreal pledges and sentiment readings.
Other examples from that period are der Goldfisch (The Goldfish) from 1925, Katze und Vogel (Cat and Bird), from 1928, and Hauptweg und Nebenwege (Main Road and Byways) from 1929. Through variations of the canvas ground and his combined painting techniques Klee created new color effects and picture impressions.
From 1916 to 1925, Klee created 50 hand puppets for his son Felix. The puppets are not mentioned in the Bauhaus catalog of works, since they were intended as private toys from the beginning. Nevertheless, they are an impressive example of Klee's imagery. He not only dealt with puppet shows privately, but also in his artistic work at the Bauhaus.
In 1931, Klee transferred to Düsseldorf to teach at the Akademie; the Nazis shut down the Bauhaus soon after. During this time, Klee illustrated a series of guardian angels. Among these figurations is "In Engelshut" (In the Angel's Care). Its overlaying technique evinces the polyphonic character of his drawing method between 1920 and 1932.Andrew Kagan, Paul Klee at the Guggenheim Museum, New York: Guggenheim Museum Library, 2003, 41.
The 1932 painting Ad Parnassum was also created in the Düsseldorf period. This is one of his largest paintings, as he usually worked with small formats. In this mosaic-like work in the style of pointillism he combined different techniques and compositional principles. Influenced by his trip to Egypt from 1928 to 1929, Klee built a color field from individually stamped dots, surrounded by similarly stamped lines, which results in a pyramid. Above the roof of the "Parnassus" there is a sun. The title identifies the picture as the home of Apollo and the .Partsch: Klee, p. 67 During his 1929 travels through Egypt, Klee developed a sense of connection to the land, described by art historian Olivier Berggruen as a mystical feeling: "In the desert, the sun's intense rays seemed to envelop all living things, and at night, the movement of the stars felt even more palpable. In the architecture of the ancient funerary moments Klee discovered a sense of proportion and measure in which human beings appeared to establish a convincing relationship with the immensity of the landscape; furthermore, he was drawn to the esoteric numerology that governed the way in which these monuments had been built."Berggruen, "Paul Klee – In Search of Natural Signs" in The Writing of Art (London: Pushkin Press, 2011), 63. In 1933, his last year in Germany, he created a range of paintings and drawings; the catalogue raisonné comprised 482 works. The self-portrait in the same year—with the programmatic title von der Liste gestrichen (removed from the list)—provides information about his feeling after losing his professorship. The abstract portrait was painted in dark colors and shows closed eyes and compressed lips, while on the back of his head there is a large "X", symbolizing that his art was no longer valued in Germany.Partsch: Klee, p. 75
Klee created in 1940 a picture which strongly differs from the previous works, leaving it unsigned on the scaffold. The comparatively realistic still life, Ohne Titel, later named as Der Todesengel (Angel of Death), depicts flowers, a green pot, sculpture and an angel. The moon on black ground is separated from these groups. During his 60th birthday Klee was photographed in front of this picture.Partsch: Klee, pp. 76–83
Novelist and Klee's friend Wilhelm Hausenstein wrote in his work Über Expressionismus in der Malerei (On Expressionism in Painting), "Maybe Klee's attitude is in general understandable for musical people—how Klee is one of the most delightsome violinist playing Bach and Händel, who ever walked on earth. … For Klee, the German classic painter of the Cubism, the world music became his companion, possibly even a part of his art; the composition, written in notes, seems to be not dissimilar."Giedion-Welcker: Klee, p. 162
When Klee visited the Paris surrealism exhibition in 1925, Max Ernst was impressed by his work. His partially morbid motifs appealed to the surrealists. André Breton helped to develop the surrealism and renamed Klee's 1912 painting Zimmerperspektive mit Einwohnern (Room Perspective with People) to chambre spirit in a catalogue. Critic René Crevel called the artist a "dreamer" who "releases a swarm of small lyrical louses from mysterious abysses." Paul Klee's confidante Will Grohmann argued in the Cahiers d'art that he "stands definitely well solid on his feet. He is by no means a dreamer; he is a modern person, who teaches as a professor at the Bauhaus." Whereupon Breton, as Joan Miró remembers, was critical of Klee: "Masson and I have both discovered Paul Klee. Paul Éluard and Crevel are also interested in Klee, and they have even visited him. But Breton despises him."
The art of mentally ill people inspired Klee as well as Kandinsky and Max Ernst, after book Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the Mentally Ill) was published in 1922. In 1937, some papers from Prinzhorn's anthology were presented at the National Socialist propaganda exhibition "Entartete Kunst" in Munich, with the purpose of defaming the works of Kirchner, Klee, Emil Nolde and other artists by likening them to the works of the insane.
In 1949 Marcel Duchamp commented on Paul Klee: "The first reaction in front of a Klee painting is the very pleasant discovery, what everyone of us could or could have done, to try drawing like in our childhood. Most of his compositions show at the first glance a plain, naive expression, found in children's drawings. … At a second analyse one can discover a technique, which takes as a basis a large maturity in thinking. A deep understanding of dealing with watercolors to paint a personal method in oil, structured in decorative shapes, let Klee stand out in the contemporary art and make him incomparable. On the other side, his experiment was adopted in the last 30 years by many other artists as a basis for newer creations in the most different areas in painting. His extreme productivity never shows evidence of repetition, as is usually the case. He had so much to say, that a Klee never became another Klee."Robert L. Herbert, Eleanor S. Apter, Elise K. Kenny: The Société Anonyme and the Dreier Bequest at Yale University. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven/ London 1984, p. 376
One of Klee's paintings, Angelus Novus, was the object of an interpretative text by German people philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin, who purchased the painting in 1921. In his "Theses on the Philosophy of History" Benjamin suggests that the angel depicted in the painting might be seen as representing the angel of history.
Another aspect of his legacy, and one demonstrating his multi-faceted presence in the modern artistic imagination, is his appeal for those interested in the history of the algorithm as exemplified by Homage to Paul Klee by computer art pioneer Frieder Nake.
Klee's work has influenced composers such as Argentinian Roberto García Morillo in 1943, with Tres pinturas de Paul Klee. Others include the American composer David Diamond in 1958, with the four-part Opus number Welt von Paul Klee (World of Paul Klee). Gunther Schuller composed Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee in the years 1959/60, consisting of Antique Harmonies, Abstract Trio, Little Blue Devil, Twittering Machine, Arab Village, An Eerie Moment, and Pastorale. The Spanish composer Benet Casablancas wrote Alter Klang, Impromptu for Orchestra after Klee (2006); Casablancas is author also of the Retablo on texts by Paul Klee, Cantata da Camera for Soprano, Mezzo and Piano (2007). In 1950, Giselher Klebe performed his orchestral work Die Zwitschermaschine with the subtitle Metamorphosen über das Bild von Paul Klee at the Donaueschinger Musiktage. 8 Pieces on Paul Klee is the title of the debut album by the Ensemble Sortisatio, recorded February and March 2002 in Leipzig and August 2002 in Lucerne, Switzerland. The composition "Wie der Klee vierblättrig wurde" (How the clover became four-leaved) was inspired by the watercolor painting Hat Kopf, Hand, Fuss und Herz (1930), Angelus Novus and Hauptweg und Nebenwege.
In 1968, a jazz group called The National Gallery featuring composer Chuck Mangione released the album Performing Musical Interpretations of the Paintings of Paul Klee.Vinyl LP, Philips catalog number: PHS 600-266. In 1995 the Greek experimental filmmaker, Kostas Sfikas, created a film based entirely on Paul Klee's paintings. The film is entitled " Paul Klee's Prophetic Bird of Sorrows", and draws its title from Klee's Landscape with Yellow Birds. It was made using portions and cutouts from Paul Klee's paintings.
Architect Renzo Piano constructed the Zentrum Paul Klee in June 2005. Located in Bern, the museum exhibits about 150 (of 4000 Klee works overall) in a six-month rotation, as it is impossible to show all of his works at once. Furthermore, his pictures require rest periods; they contain relatively photosensitive colors, inks and papers, which may bleach, change, turn brown and become brittle if exposed to light for too long. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has a comprehensive Klee collection, donated by Carl Djerassi. Other exhibitions include the Sammlung Rosengart in Luzern, the Albertina in Wien and the Berggruen Museum in Berlin. Schools in Gersthofen, Lübeck; Klein-Winternheim, Overath; his place of birth Münchenbuchsee and Düsseldorf bear his name.
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