Early Years
Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland on December 18, 1879, to a Swiss mother and a German father, both of whom were accomplished musicians. He grew up in Bern, Switzerland, where his father had been transferred to work as the conductor of the Bern concert orchestra.
Klee was an adequate, but not overly enthusiastic student. He was particularly interested in his study of Greek and continued to read Greek poetry in the original language throughout his life. He was well-rounded, but his love of art and music were clearly evident. He drew constantly — ten sketchbooks survive from his childhood — and also continued to play music, even as an extra in the Municipal Orchestra of Bern.
Corbis via Getty Images / Getty Images
Based on his broad education, Klee could have gone into any profession, but chose to become an artist because, as he said in the 1920s, «it seemed to be lagging behind and he felt that perhaps he could help to advance it.» He became a very influential painter, draughtsman, printmaker, and art teacher. However, his love of music continued to have a lifelong influence on his unique and idiosyncratic art.
Klee went to Munich in 1898 to study at the private Knirr Art School, working with Erwin Knirr, who was very enthusiastic about having Klee as his student, and expressed the opinion at the time that «if Klee persevered the result might be extraordinary.» Klee studied drawing and painting with Knirr and then with Franz Stuck at the Munich Academy.
In June of 1901, after three years of study in Munich, Klee traveled to Italy where he spent most of his time in Rome. After that time he returned to Bern in May of 1902 to digest what he had absorbed in his travels. He stayed there until his marriage in 1906, during which time he produced a number of etchings which garnered some attention.
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Highway and Byways
- Date created: 1929
- Dimensions: 83,7 × 67,5 centimeters (33 × 26.6 inches)
- Location: Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany
Highway and Byways is another painting that dates back to shortly after his second trip to Egypt in 1929. He was clearly experimenting with Pointillism during this period in his career, although this reflects in layers of strips in this amazing painting.
The different colors of each line determine what the viewer perceives to be the main highway, which runs through the center, and the byways, which run horizontally all across the canvas. The highway consists of 45 different stripes before it gets absorbed by the blue section on top.
Highway and Byways / Wiki Commons
Fish Magic
- Date created: 1925
- Dimensions: 77.2 × 98.4 centimeters (30.4 × 38.7 inches)
- Location: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, United States
Fish Magic is a great example of the experimental nature of Paul Klee. This remarkable work of art depicts a variety of aquatic animals in combination with flowers and other peculiar beings, all set against a black background.
The way Klee went about creating this painting is also quite special He first completed a layer of colorful elements which he then covered with a thick layer of black paint. He later carved this black layer away to reveal the colorful figures.
Fish Magic / Wiki Commons
Портрет женщины в желтой шляпе. Ок. 1930
Малевич К.С.Холст, масло48 x 38,5
Русский музей
Биография автора
Малевич Казимир Северинович (1878, Киев, Украина – 1935, Ленинград)
Живописец, график, художник театра, теоретик, педагог. Родился в Киеве. Учился в Московском училище живописи, ваяния и зодчества (1904—1905) и студии Ф. И. Рерберга в Москве (1905–1910). Участвовал в выставках «Бубновый валет» (1910) и «Ослиный хвост» (1912). В 1910-х оформлял книги футуристов, принимал участие в постановке первой футуристической оперы «Победа над солнцем» (1913). Участвовал в организации общества «Супремус» (лат. — наивысший) и одноименного журнала (1916–1917). Был членом общества «Бубновый валет» (1911). В 1918 работал в Отделе ИЗО Наркомпроса. Преподавал в Государственных средних художественных мастерских в Москве (1918), директор Витебского художественно-практического института (1919–1922). В 1920 основал группу УНОВИС («Утвердители нового искусства»). Директор и профессор Государственного института художественной культуры в Ленинграде (1923–1927). В 1927 совершил поездку в Варшаву и Берлин. В 1929–1930 преподавал в Киевском художественном институте. В 1932–1933 руководил экспериментальной лабораторией в Русском музее. Автор пейзажей, жанровых сцен, портретов, кубистических и беспредметных композиций, пространственных структур — «архитектонов» и «планит». Работал в области декоративно-прикладного искусства. Написал брошюры «От кубизма и футуризма к супрематизму. Новый живописный реализм» (1915), «Супрематизм» (1920), «Беспредметный мир» (1927) и другие теоретические исследования и статьи. Крупнейший представитель русского авангарда, основоположник теории супрематизма.
Caprice In February, 1938
Caprice in February, 1938, by Paul Klee.
Barney Burstein/Corbis Historical/Getty Images
«Caprice in February» is another later work which shows the use of heavier lines and geometric forms with larger areas of color. At this stage of his life and career he varied his color palette depending on his mood, sometimes using brighter colors, sometimes using more somber colors.
Resources and Further Reading
- Grohmann, Will, Paul Klee, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1955.
- How to Be an Artist, According to Paul Klee, Artsy, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-how-to-be-an-artist-according-to-paul-klee
- Paul Klee, The Guggenheim Museum, https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/paul-klee
- Paul Klee (187901940), The Metropolitan Museum,https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/483154
Castle and Sun
- Date created: 1928
- Dimensions: 50 x 59 centimeters (19.68 x 23.22 inches)
- Location: Private collection
Castle and Sun is the title of a painting that appears to be self-explanatory, but when you see the work, it’s actually quite surprising. This work consists of dozens of colorful geometric shapes with red being the dominant color.
We can distinguish the sun that is set against the dark red background. The triangular shapes further down represent the battlements of a castle. It’s a combination of a Cubist and an Expressionist painting, two styles that Klee experimented with throughout his career.
Castle and Sun / Wiki Commons
Influences on His Art
Klee was ambitious and idealistic but had a demeanor that was reserved and calm. He believed in a gradual organic evolution of events rather than forcing change, and his systematic approach to his work echoed this methodical approach to life.
Klee was primarily a draftsman (left-handed, incidentally). His drawings, sometimes seemingly very childlike, were very precise and controlled, much like other German artists such as Albrecht Dürer.
Klee was a keen observer of nature and natural elements, which was an inexhaustible source of inspiration to him. He often had his students observe and draw tree branching, human circulatory systems, and tanks of fish to study their movement.
It wasn’t until 1914, when Klee traveled to Tunisia, that he began to understand and explore color. He was further inspired in his color explorations by his friendship with Kandinsky and the works of the French painter, Robert Delaunay. From Delaunay, Klee learned what color could be when used purely abstractly, independent of its descriptive role.
Klee was also influenced by his predecessors, such as Vincent van Gogh, and his peers — Henri Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and other members of the Blue Rider Group — who believed that art should express the spiritual and metaphysical rather than merely what is visible and tangible.
Throughout his life music was a major influence, evident in the visual rhythm of his images and in the staccato notes of his color accents. He created a painting much like a musician plays a piece of music, as if making music visible or visual art audible.
Abstract Trio, 1923, by Paul Klee, watercolor and ink on paper,.
Fine Art/Corbis Historical/Getty Images
Legacy/Impact
Klee created more than 9.000 works of art during his life, consisting of a personal abstract pictorial language of signs, lines, shapes, and colors during a specific time in history amid the backdrop of World War I and World War II.
His automatic paintings and use of color inspired the surrealists, abstract expressionists, Dadaists, and color field painters. His lectures and essays on color theory and art are some of the most important to ever be written, rivaling even the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci.
Klee had a widespread influence on painters who followed him and there have been several large retrospective exhibitions of his work in Europe and America since his death, including one at the Tate Modern, called «Paul Klee — Making Visible,» as recently as 2013-2014.
Twittering Machine
- Date created: 1922
- Dimensions: 63.8 × 48.1 centimeters (25.25 × 19 inches)
- Location: MoMA, New York City, United States
Twittering Machine has nothing to do with the social media platform that launched nearly a century after this painting was completed. It’s a fascinating work of art that was created using watercolor and pen and ink oil on paper.
This peculiar work depicts a group of birds that sit on a wire which is attached to what appears to be a hand crank. The exact meaning of the work remains up for debate and theories range from a nightmare to the victory of nature over machines.
Twittering Machine / Wiki Commons
Family and Career
During the three years Klee spent studying in Munich he met the pianist Lily Stumpf, who would later become his wife. In 1906 Klee returned to Munich, a center of art and artists at the time, to advance his career as an artist and to marry Stumpf, who already had an active career there. They had a son named Felix Paul a year later.
For the first five years of their marriage, Klee stayed home and tended to the child and home, while Stumpf continued to teach and perform. Klee did both graphic artwork and painting, but struggled with both, as domestic demands competed with his time.
In 1910, the designer and illustrator Alfred Kubin visited his studio, encouraged him, and became one of his most significant collectors. Later that year Klee exhibited 55 drawings, watercolors and etchings in three different cities in Switzerland, and in 1911 had his first one-man show in Munich.
In 1912, Klee participated in the second Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reider) Exhibition, devoted to graphic work, at the Goltz Gallery in Munich. Other participants included Vasily Kandinsky, Georges Braque, Andre Dérain, and Pablo Picasso, whom he later met during a visit to Paris. Kandinsky became a close friend.
Klee and Klumpf lived in Munich until 1920, except for Klee’s absence during three years of military service.
In 1920, Klee was appointed to the faculty of the Bauhaus under Walter Gropius, where he taught for a decade, first in Weimar until 1925 and then in Dessau, its new location, beginning in 1926, lasting until 1930. In 1930 he was asked to teach at the Prussian State Academy in Dusseldorf, where he taught from 1931 to 1933, when he was fired from his job after the Nazis took notice of him and ransacked his house.
He and his family then returned to his hometown of Bern, Switzerland, where he had spent two or three months every summer since moving to Germany.
In 1937, 17 of Klee’s paintings were included in the Nazi’s notorious «Degenerate Art» exhibit as examples of the corruption of art. Many of Klee’s works in public collections were seized by the Nazis. Klee responded to Hitler’s treatment of artists and general inhumanity in his own work, though, often disguised by seemingly childlike images.
Heritage Images/Getty Images / Getty Images
Senecio
- Date created: 1922
- Dimensions: 40.5 × 38 centimeters (15.9 × 15 inches)
- Location: Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland
Senecio is another painting that was completed in the Cubist style and is also known as “Head of a Man Going Senile.” Without this title, we could only envision a head that is composed of various colorful fields that are put together and a pair of off-balance eyes.
Upon closer inspection, e can identify the patches of a harlequin that are composed of all sorts of geometric forms. Paul Klee managed to create the illusion of a raised eyebrow by turning the triangle and curved line above the right eye upside down.
Senecio / Wiki Commons
Ad Parnassum
- Date created: 1932
- Dimensions: 100 × 126 centimeters (39 × 50 inches)
- Location: Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Ad Parnassum is a painting that Paul Klee completed while he was teaching art at the Dusseldorf Academy in Germany. He had been a teacher at the Bauhaus School in Munich but the Nazis closed down this influential art institute in the early 1930s.
Inspired by a trip to Egypt he did 3 years prior, this is Klee’s version of the Pointillist technique that was devised by Georges Seurat (1859-1891) in the early 1880s. It was based on his own writings about color theory and is considered to be one of Paul Klee’s most famous paintings.
Ad Parnassum / Wiki Commons