Background

Ethnicity: Klee's father was born in Germany, and his mother came from Swetzerland.

Paul Klee was born on December 18, 1879 in Münchenbuchsee, Bern, Switzerland. He was a son of Hans Wilhelm Klee, a teacher of music, and Ida Marie Klee, trained as a singer. Klee had an elder sister Mathilde.

Education

After completing primary education, Paul Klee studied at the classical Literarschule (a literary secondary school) in Bern from 1886 to 1890. A son of musicians, he was taught violin at the Municipal Music School since the age of seven. He was so successful in the craft that he was invited to perform as the member of the Bern Music Association four years later.

As a boy, Klee produced delicate landscape drawings, and filled his school notebooks with comic sketches. He also wrote poetry and even tried his hand at writing plays but these hobbies were discouraged in contrast to his probable career in music. However, Klee was permitted to pursue his studies in art, and in 1898, he joined the private art school of Heinrich Knirr in Munich. A year later, he enrolled at the local Academy of Fine Arts, headed by Franz von Stuck at the time.

Upon graduation from the Academy, Paul Klee, accompanied by his friend, a sculptor Hermann Haller, journeyed to Italy from October 1901 to May 1902. The art of ancient Rome and of the Renaissance made him to reexamine the imitative styles of his teachers and of his own previous work.

Career

The start of Paul Klee's career can be counted from his brief service as a violinist in the Bern symphony orchestra from 1903 to 1906. The first major works as an artist, series of etchings titled Inventions, produced at about the same time, technically demonstrated the influence of the Renaissance prints. The exhibition of these early works held in Frankfurt am Main and Munich received little attention that pushed the young artist to earn his living by writing reviews of art events, giving life-drawing classes, and contributing illustrations for periodicals and books. The drawings he produced in 1911-12 for Voltaire's novel Candide were quite successful.

Paul Klee stayed away from modern art till 1911 when he joined the Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group of artists, including its founders Wassily Kandinsky and the German painter Franz Marc. He made his first attempts in abstraction at that time, and discovered the art of Robert Delaunay, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque while taking part in the second exhibit of the group the next year.

Most of the work to that time had been in black and white as Paul Klee lost confidence in his abilities as a colourist. The situation improved after the trip to Tunisia that he took in spring with his friend Louis Moilliet and a fellow artist from Der Blaue Reiter, August Macke. The watercolors depicting views of Tunis, Hammamet, and Kairouan that he produced during this two-week journey formed the basis for many of his following works, both in subject and style.

Paul Klee served on the home front, in Bavaria, during World War I. The landscapes of the period stand out by romantic childlike vision, referring to the conflict only through the images of demons or fights with fate. The manner of the paintings resonated with the audience, due to the help of the exhibition in Der Sturm Gallery in Berlin, and the first purchases of Klee's works followed.

Paul Klee remained true to these evocative landscapes in the postwar period but painted several imaginary works typical for him before the war. The most vivid examples of his oeuvre of the time are his oil transfer paintings, such as Room Perspective with Inhabitants (1921), and Twittering Machine (1922). After the fail of the November Revolution in 1918, the artist came back to Switzerland.

Paul Klee taught the basic design program on the mechanics of art at the Bauhaus school in Weimar and Dessau since 1920. It was at that time that he created his famous Notebooks which collected his own methods and all his teaching experience. The debut solo show of the artist was held in 1925 in Paris.

Six years later, Klee left the post at the Bauhaus in favor of another teaching position at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Dusseldorf Academy). He continued to work with geometric forms, as seen on his pointillist paintings of 1930–32, with their mosaic-like surfaces of colored dots. But most of his pictures of the early and mid-1930s show varying attempts at loosening his style, with freer compositions and brushwork.

Klee had to leave the post at the Academy in 1933 as the Nazi party that came to power declared all modern art as "degenerate." The artist's house and studio were searched by the Gestapo on account of his known left-wing sympathies. Nevertheless, Klee continued to produce art, mostly representational and narrative drawings which reflected the then political and social situation in ironic way.

The artistic productivity declined significantly after his return to Bern at the end of the 1933. The financial uncertainty of the artist was compounded by an incurable illness diagnosed two years later. The late works of Paul Klee, most of which have grief, pain, resilience and death as the main subject, demonstrated strong influence of Pablo Picasso's art of the 1920s and '30s.

Achievements

• 

  Paul Klee was a prolific artist who produced about nine hundred paintings, drawings, and watercolors which stand out by their musicality, variety of styles and approaches. His small scaled works combined irony and a sense of the absurd with an intense evocation of the mystery and beauty of nature.
  
  Highly individual, and hardly attributable to any concrete movement, Klee's art had an important influence on the New York School, Color Field painters, and other 20-century artists, including Jean Dubuffet and Ellsworth Kelly. Many composers drew inspiration for their creations in Paul Klee's works, including Roberto García Morillo, David Diamond, Gunther Schuller, and Giselher Klebe.
  
  The importance of Klee's lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory (Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre) for modern art is matched in importance by Leonardo da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting for the Renaissance.
  
  The Zentrum Paul Klee under the project of an Italian architect Renzo Piano was completed in Bern, Switzerland, in 2005. Nowadays, it hosts about 40 percent of Paul Klee's legacy.

Works

More photos

• artwork

  • Neuer Stadtteil in M

  • Fish Image

• book

  • The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918

    (Here, together with recollections of his childhood in Ber...)

    1964

• drawing

  • Apparatus for the Magnetic Treatment of Plants

  • New Angel

• painting

  • The signatories to the window

    ((The artist at the window))

  • Rhythmic

    ((Rythmical))

  • Mountain Village

    ((Autumnal))

  • Pastoral

    ((Rhythms))

  • Heroic Roses

  • The Mask with the Little Flag

  • Portrait of a Man

  • Forest Witch

  • Promenade in the Orient

  • Villa R

  • The messenger of autumn

  • New Harmony

  • In the box

  • Hammamet

  • An allegory of propaganda

  • Strong Dream

  • Sparse foliage

  • The vase

  • The Light and So Much Else

  • Miraculous Landing

  • Houses near the Gravel Pit

  • Blue bird pumpkin

  • Aroundfish

  • Cat and Bird

  • Separation in the Evening

  • A kind of cat

  • After annealing

  • With the Egg

  • Chosen Site

  • Small Landscape with the village church

  • Witch scene

  • Oriental Architecture

  • Flower stand with watering can and bucket

  • Swamp legend

  • Child and aunt

  • Senecio

  • Southern gardens

  • Rock Chamber

  • Windows and palm trees

  • Part of G

  • Rising Star

  • Women in their Sunday best

  • The place of the twins

  • Côtes de Provence

  • Still Life with Dove

  • Legend of the Nile

  • The column

  • Castle and Sun

  • Side Panels for 'Anatomy of Aphrodite'

  • In the Style of Kairouan

  • A swarming

  • City of Churches

  • Landscape with Yellow Birds

  • Puppet theater

  • Revolving House

  • Park of idols

  • Mess of fish

  • In the Quarry

  • Likeness in the bower

  • Boats in the Flood

  • A woman for Gods

  • Tropical twilight

  • The Future Man

  • Ad Parnassum

  • Station L 112

  • Red and White Domes

  • Death and fire

  • Full moon

  • Castle Garden

  • Growth of the night plants

  • Destroyed place

  • Hoffmanneske scene

  • Bandit's head

  • Fugue in red

  • Dream City

  • Twittering Machine

  • Love Song by the New Moon

  • The Goldfish

  • Captive

  • A gate

  • Garden Figure

  • Before the Snow

  • Black Knight

  • Women's Pavilion

  • Abstraction with Reference to a Flowering Tree

  • Monument

  • Landscape with Sunset

  • Historic ground

  • Highway and Byways

  • Asian entertainers

  • Once Emerged from the Gray of Night

  • Enlightenment of two Sectie

  • Ravaged land

  • Actor's Mask

  • Siblings

  • Pious northern landscape

  • Halme

  • In the current six thresholds

  • Necropolis

  • The last of the mercenaries

  • Park Bei Lu

  • Red Balloon

  • Reconstructing

  • House on the Water

  • The lover

  • Evening shows

  • After the floods

  • Abstract Colour Harmony in Squares with Vermillion Accents

  • Flowers in Stone

  • Struck from the List

  • Contemplation

  • Fruits on Red

  • Cosmic Composition

  • Temple Gardens

  • View Towards the Port of Hammamet

  • Stage Landscape

  • Cacodemonic

  • Before the Blitz

  • Flora on sand

  • Southern Gardens

  • The Chapel

  • Rose garden

  • In the houses of St. Germain

  • Small room in Venice

  • Flower myth

  • Pierrot Lunaire

  • Botanical Theater

  • Two country houses

  • My mom drunk falls into the chair

  • The Lamb

  • Structural II

  • The Travelling Circus

  • Refuge

  • Oriental Garden

  • Rope dancer

  • Crystalline Landscape

  • Head of a child

  • Architecture of the Plain

  • Chinese porcelain

  • The rumors

  • Heroic Fiddling

  • Coming to bloom

  • Insula Dulcamara

  • This flower wishes to fade

  • Individualized Altimetry of Stripes

  • The singer L as Fioridigli

  • Crystal

  • Error on green

  • At the Core

  • Fish Magic

  • Angel Still Feminine

  • Diana in the Autumn Wind

  • Transparent in perspective Grooved

  • Little Tree Amid Shrubbery

  • Bad band

  • Hammamet with mosque

  • Colour Shapes

  • Veil Dance

  • Fire evening

  • Six species

  • WI (In Memoriam)

  • With the Setting Sun

  • Glass Facade

  • Still Life with Thistle Bloom

  • Revolution of the Viaduct

  • Analysis of diverse perversities

  • Red waistcoat

  • Fairy tale of the Dwarf

  • Harbour with sailing ships

  • Park

  • Fire, Full Moon

  • Hamamet

  • Possessed girl

  • Rising Sun

  • City Picture with Red and Green Accents

  • Summer houses

  • Remembrance of a Garden

  • Clouds over Bor

  • A pressure of Tegernsee

  • Characters in yellow

  • Place signs

  • Foehn Wind in Marc's Garden

  • Groynes

  • Seventeen

  • Tale of Hoffmann

  • Flora on rocks Sun

  • Wall Painting from the Temple of Longing

  • Magdalena before the conversion

  • Gauze

  • Battle scene from The Seafarer opera

  • Bird Wandering Off

  • A young ladys adventure

• print

  • Phenix

  • Death for the Idea

  • The Saint of Inner Light

Politics

Although Paul Klee was mostly secretive about his opinion on World War I, he accepted the post on the Executive Committee of Revolutionary Artists founded by newly declared communist government in Munich in November 1918.

The political convictions of the artist were reflected in several of his works, including Revolution des Viadukts (Revolution of the Viadukt).

Views

Paul Klee compared Cubism to children's art because on his thought, both brought art to its basis, by the timeless geometry and by direct and naive renderings respectively.

Quotations: "The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual. The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions."

"When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed."

"What does the artist create? Forms and spaces! How does he create them? In certain chosen proportions.. .O satire, you plague of intellectuals."

"To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers."

"Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be frugal down to the last detail."

"It is interesting to observe how real the object remains, in spite of all abstractions."

"Art should be like a holiday: something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view."

Membership

Paul Klee was a member of Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four).

• Die Blaue Vier , Germany

Personality

Paul Klee, who inherited German citizenship of his father according to Swiss law, applied for Swiss citizenship closer to the end of his life. He died just days before the application was approved.

Physical Characteristics: Paul Klee was diagnosed with scleroderma in 1935. Its manifestations restrained his working activity for more than a year.

Quotes from others about the person

• Wassily Kandinsky: "At the Bauhaus, Klee exuded a healthy, generative atmosphere – as a great artist and as a lucid, pure human being."
  
  Karl Ruhrberg: "Klee's idiosyncracies always remained somewhat beyond the law, as it were. For 'genius is the defect in the system,' stated the conscientious system builder, who knew that genius was the only thing that could neither be taught nor learned."
  
  Richard Dorment: "In any painting or drawing by Klee the working method was broadly the same. He started every picture with an abstract mark – a square, a triangle, a circle, a line or a dot – and then allowed that motif to evolve or grow, almost like a living organism. Klee's control over whatever medium he is using is never less than masterful, but you always sense that he began not knowing where it would lead."
  
  Oskar Schlemmer, painter, sculptor and designer: "Klee's act is very prestigious. In a minimum of one line he can reveal his wisdom. He is everything; profound, gentle and many more of the good things, and this because: he is innovative."

Interests

• Artists

  Robert Delaunay, Maurice de Vlaminck, Pablo Picasso

• Music & Bands

  Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler, Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Connections

Paul Klee met his wife-to-be, a pianist Lily Stumpf, while studying art in Munich. They married in 1906, and had a son, Felix Paul, a year later. The family was supported largely by Lily's piano lessons during the early artistic career of Paul Klee.

Father:

Hans Wilhelm Klee

(born 1849 – died 1940)

Hans Klee did his studies in music at the Stuttgart Conservatory (curently the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart). He taught music at the Bern State Seminary in Hofwil, not far from Bern, untill 1931.

Mother:

Ida Marie Klee

(née Frick; born 1855 – died 1921)

Friend:

Wassily Kandinsky

(born 16 December 1866 – died 13 December 1944)

Kandinsky was a notable painter, playwright, poet and art theorist, born in Russian Empire (present-day Russian Federation). He was considered one of the first creators of pure abstraction in modern painting. Besides, Kandinsky was known as the founder of the influential Munich Der Blaue Reiter group (The Blue Rider, 1911-1914).

Sister:

Mathilde Klee

(born 28 January 1876 – died 6 December 1953)

Wife:

Lily Klee

(née Stumpf; born 10 October 1876 – died 22 September 1946)

Lily was a daughter of a doctor and medical adviser Ludwig Stumpf and his wife Anne Marie Pohle.

Son:

Felix Paul Klee

(born 30 November 1907 – died 13 August 1990)

Friend:

Hermann Haller

(born 24 December 1880 – died 23 November 1950)

colleague:

Lyonel Feininger

(born 17 July 1871 – died 13 January 1956)

Feininger was a German-born American painter and educator, who combined a Cubist and Expressionist styles with his own distinctive use of form and color. A dramatic use of light is also a distinguishing feature of Feininger's work.

colleague:

Alexej von Jawlensky

(born 13 March 1864 – died 15 March 1941)

Jawlensky was a Russian painter who represented Expressionism. Active in Germany, the artist was famous for his Expressionistic portraits and the mystical tone of his late paintings of abstract faces. He was associated with the New Munich Artist's Association, Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group, and the Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four) group.

References

• Paul Klee: Life and Work This beautiful and affordable volume offers high-quality reproductions and the latest biographical information on Paul Klee, who helped pave the way for Modernism.
  2011
• Paul Klee: Painting Music Illustrated throughout with full-color reproductions of Klee's paintings and etchings, as well as entries from his diaries, this unique study sheds light on music, an important aspect of Klee's work, while providing insights into his development as an abstract artist.
  2012
• Paul Klee The book presents the life and work of the abstract painter, focusing on his use of color, shape, and symbolism.
  2001
• Paul Klee: The Abstract Dimension The book examines a previously little-explored aspect of the artist's oeuvre.
  2018
• Paul Klee: Irony at Work Offering a fresh look at one of the major artists of the 20th century, this book illustrates how Paul Klee's critical and ironic take on life was evident in every stage of his oeuvre.
  2016
• Paul Klee. Masterpieces of Art With a fresh and thoughtful introduction to Klee's life and art, the book goes on to showcase his key works in all their glory.
  2014
• Paul Klee: Construction of Mystery The book presents the prestigious Munich collection of Klee's works in conjunction with more than one hundred loaned by international institutions, providing a new angle on the abstract works Klee painted during his Bauhaus period.
  2018