Biography of paul klee
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He exclaimed, "The Forum and the Vatican have spoken to me. His friends Macke and Marc both died in battle. In 1933-4, Klee had shows in London and Paris, and finally met Pablo Picasso, whom he greatly admired. While he had been born in Switzerland, his father was German, which according to Swiss law meant that Klee was a German citizen.
His travels to Paris in 1912 also exposed him to the ferment of Cubism and the pioneering examples of "pure painting", an early term for abstract art. Rather than copy these artists, Klee began working out his own color experiments in pale watercolors and did some primitive landscapes, including In the Quarry (1913) and Houses near the Gravel Pit(1913), using blocks of color with limited overlap.
The use of bold color by Robert Delaunayand Maurice de Vlaminck also inspired him. The image juxtaposes the cold white with the warm reds and yellows, perhaps symbolic, like a kind of cave painting, of the creation of man and the image of his sad mortality. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.
It was during his time at the Bauhaus that Klee's unique style truly flourished, as he experimented with various techniques and materials, pushing the boundaries of traditional art.
Most Famous Paintings
Klee's artistic oeuvre is vast and diverse, encompassing a wide range of styles and themes. Inspired by Klee's interest in hieroglyphics, Death and Fire suggests that abstraction and representation have been mutually accommodating, or otherwise complementary means of expression, since time immemorial.Oil and colored paste on burlap - Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern
Biography of Paul Klee
Childhood
Paul Klee was born to a German father who taught music at the Berne-Hofwil teacher's college and a Swiss mother trained as a professional singer.
In his own work he often strove to achieve a similar untutored simplicity, often by employing intense colors inspired by an early trip to North Africa, and by line drawing in the unstudied manner of an everyday craftsman.
The Bauhaus was an influential school of architecture and industrial design that aimed to provide students with a grounding in all of the visual arts. In 1910, he had his first solo exhibition in Bern, which then traveled to three Swiss cities.
Trip to Tunis, 1914
Kleee's artistic breakthrough came in 1914 when he briefly visited Tunisia with August Macke and Louis Moilliet and was impressed by the quality of the light there.
Klee suggests that color, shape, and the faintest suggestion of a subject are enough to powerfully re-create in the eye of the viewer the actual feeling of repose that the artist experienced in the original landscape.
Watercolor and pencil on paper - Berggruen Klee Collection, New York
1922
Affected Place [Betroffener Ort]
Created in Klee's early Bauhaus years, this piece shows a scene of ambiguous signs and symbols over a background of modulated purples and oranges.
The November Revolution failed soon thereafter and Klee returned to Switzerland.
Klee accepted an invitation to teach at the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar in 1920. Klee met, through Kubin, the art critic Wilhelm Hausenstein in 1911, and was in the summer that year foundation member and manager of the Munich artists' union Sema.
"Permit me to be scared stiff," Klee said after seeing Van Gogh's paintings. Keeping his work within the realm of the "ordinary," Klee also painted on a variety of everyday materials, such as burlap, cardboard panel, and muslin.
The Life of Paul Klee
When the Swiss-born Paul Klee visited Tunisia in 1914, he was looking in part for his "oriental" roots.
His late works dealt with the grief, pain, resilience, and acceptance of approaching death.
Several of Klee's works were included in the "Degenerate Art" exhibition staged by the National Socialists in Munich in 1937.